Premium Oil? Use Premium Filters

What would your customers say if they knew they’d get thousands of extra kilometers on their engine by spending a few bucks more on an oil filter? Chances are, they’d say, ‘do it’, and the extra two-buck margin you just made on a premium oil filter has just bought you a lot a credibility. Five minutes spent explaining the benefits of a better oil filter will convince your customers they’ve left their car in good hands.

Consumers are spending a bundle on their cars, and they’re keeping them longer and driving them harder. More and more consumers are up to speed on the benefits of synthetic oil, but do they know how important a good oil filter is? The right filter is essential for optimizing the performance of any oil, and the margins are better, too. For the same shelf space you make more profit, do a better job maintaining your client’s car, and cultivate repeat business. Everybody wins.

The old rule of thumb goes that as long as motorists are changing their oil with the prescribed frequency, any oil filter will be adequate. Not so, says Vince Salfi, Director of Marketing Filters, Affinia Canada Corp. (Wix, Kralinator): “If the piece of equipment doesn’t fail between oil change intervals, the perception by the service provider is that the cheaper filters must be performing an O.K. job. The reality is that the contaminants that are by-passing the filter due to poorly constructed product and cheap materials are slowly eroding the life-span of the equipment.”

Vehicles manufactured within the last 10 years are being driven an average of nearly 175,000 miles before being scrapped. Other studies show that consumers on average bring their vehicles in for an oil change every 4,500 miles, not the recommended 3,000 miles. Also, the oil change interval recommended by most automobile manufacturers does not account for the stop and go driving style of urban areas, which demands more from an oil and filter. And in Canada most manufacturers regard our combination of climate and driving conditions as “severe service” according to the factory service recommendations. For most vehicles, a cheap oil filter probably isn’t doing the job.

Treating an oil change as a low-end entry level service means you’re missing an opportunity to offer value-added service and build customer confidence. Explains Megan Currie, Marketing Manager, Honeywell Consumer Products Group (Fram): “Installers need to understand the technology behind both the oil and the oil filter. If they look at it from a profitability standpoint, they can command a higher price for that oil change. They’re doing that already for the premium oil, but for, say, fifty cents more their cost for a premium oil filter, they can sell that oil filter for a couple of bucks more and make it a true branded oil change. By giving them that choice for the step-up, the consumer will have greater trust in them because they’ll feel that they’re putting the right product on their car, not just the cheap filter.”

Just as oils have become more job specific, there is a range of oil filters you can offer customers that will suit their vehicle and their driving style. For instance, oils designed for high mileage vehicles could be partnered with an oil filter with additives designed to maintain viscosity to protect those older engines. There are premium oil filters designed for trucks and SUVs that get serious use, with larger capacity and better filter media to trap more contaminants. Also, the longer oil change intervals of many new vehicles requires a quality oil filter with a large capacity that won’t quit in the final few thousand kilometers before the car comes in.

The multi-pass efficiency of the latest premium oil filters can be up to an impressive 99%, thanks to new, synthetic filter medias that trap more contaminants. The cellulose media of cheaper oil filters trap fewer particles and allow less oil flow per square inch because there are fewer passages through it. The new synthetic medias have more passages and can trap more particles while permitting more oil flow per square inch than cellulose. So the superior materials of premium filters offer the dual benefit of allowing a freer flow of oil while still trapping even the smallest particles, something cheap oil filters can’t accomplish. And better quality drain-back valves, improved with such temperature resistant materials as silicone, protect the engine better than cheaper nitrile rubber diaphragms, which can get stiff in extreme cold and fail to seal properly.

Premium oil simply won’t perform optimally without a premium filter, and customers need to hear that. They also want to know that their engine will be protected, even if they go over the recommended oil change interval. Says Salfi, “With the growing concern of under-performed maintenance on vehicles, the cheaper oil filters do not have the safety margin built-into the product as do premium filters. Premium oil filters are a cheap life insurance policy for the expensive equipment on the road today.”

Offering premium oil filters does not require a massive investment in time or space in your shop. Stocking filters designed to partner with your oil selection makes it simple to offer customers a branded, high-end oil change package with a better margin.

Says Shannon Gibson, Marketing Manager, ArvinMeritor (Purolator): “It is not necessary for the shop to stock a full line of premium filters. Start with the most popular SKUs and utilize a local jobber or retailer for fill-ins. Premium oil filter sales fit perfectly with the predominant strategy of revenue-generation and high customer satisfaction required in today’s service business platform, and can deliver a very healthy profit margin for the service center operator in a range well above 50 percent. At the same time, these stations are providing a beneficial, performance enhancing solution directly to the consumer.”

Premium oil filters aren’t just hype. They offer significantly better performance at a modest premium in price-the kind of good value consumers can relate to. Educating consumers on the benefits of keeping their engines clean and lubricated with premium oils and filters can also lead to add-on sales of air filters and other profitable services like coolant flushes. Preventative maintenance offers good dollar return on time spent, and fosters the all-important repeat business that keeps your bays occupied.

Says Currie: “People have less time, so finding someone that they trust is more important than ever. Getting into that mode of preventative maintenance means trust building and a portfolio of customers coming in all the time. It’s a real opportunity.”

How are oil filters rated?

Determining how effective an oil filter is in service has historically been difficult, since filter media types and surface area don’t always correlate to good filtering. Issues such as filtering efficiency, particle size trapped and pressure drop across the filter are all important; to give manufacturers and the aftermarket an apple-to-apples comparison, the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) have created tests that allow OEM’s to specify the filtering performance they need with precision. Called “J806” the test passes oil through a filter once, measuring the size of particles trapped, the contaminant holding capacity of the filter and its ability to maintain clean oil. An added multi pass test under J806 measure filter life, the weight of trapped contaminants over time and efficiency based on the weight of trapped particles. A filter might typically have 85% efficiency in the single pass test and an 80% figure in the multi-pass version.

A newer, more comprehensive test, J1858, isn’t mandatory, but is used by some filter manufacturers to highlight performance of their high-end products. In this test, actual counts of contaminant particles by size are made every 10 minutes before and after the filter. This allows a measure of filtering efficiency at each particle size as well as contaminant capacity and pressure loss. SAE J1858 tests sho
w different percent efficiency numbers for each particle size, with the highest percentages representing the largest particles. When comparing advertised claims for oil filters that quote this test, it’s important to know both the efficiency rating and the size of the contaminants trapped for a true comparison.