Hey Pablo!
quote:
Am curious as to the various other brands that are book recommended for your car. Are they dead nuts 12-16?
No, they aren't. None of them, in fact, and that might be why Hyundai/Kia OEM filters have a weird (compared to most aftermarket filters) bypass range. They almost force you to run THEIR filter, which is tiny, of unknown efficiency, and costs $8, if you're under warranty. They even issued a TSB regarding the issue of filters "causing" valve train noise. My guess is, that TSB was to lay the groundwork for further denials of warranty coverage for those that do not knuckle under and pay the stealership premium for OEM filters.
I was talking to the service manager about all this last week (I know they consider me a pain already, but I haven't even gotten warmed up yet). In late 2004 the Hyundai dealer in Va. Beach got beaten out in a case that went to arbitration trying to deny a warranty claim (seized engine) because a of a non OEM spec filter bypass setting that was too low, at 8-11 PSI.
According to this guy, the arbitrating engineers ruled that a failure related to SLUDGE using a filter with too low a bypass would have tipped the ruling to the dealer, but this was a failure of the oil pump in a Sonata with 20K on it. The owner did his own OCIs right on time, using aftermarket filters, and spec'd 5W20 SL (this all happened late 2004, supposedly). But they ruled that denying the claim on a bypass setting that was TOO LOW was nonsensical as the engine wasn't oil-starved owing to the filter, but rather the failed pump. The dealer in that case was using any excuse possible to screw the customer, obviously. The guy I talked to, off the record of course, thinks they do too much denying of claims in any case. He says he thinks they lose more of these arbitrations than they win, but the results aren't seen by the public, like a lawsuit, so they take a shot at the denial in more cases than we hear about out here in the world. He only hears about them through memos and TSBs.
So they got internal memos not to deny warranty-failures based on customer-provided filters using lower than OEM bypass pressures. The service manager where I go for "advice" said based on that decision, I shouldn't use a filter with a bypass pressure HIGHER than 16 PSI. As the bypass pressure-range of the Amsoil filters I want to use is 11-17, and as that's the documented, spec'd, official setting, I simply cannot use that filter. If I had a cracked cam and it failed in-warranty, thats their out on the warranty right there.
I have no idea WHY Amsoil goes so high on the bypass on those filters (the Ea020), but that's the published spec, 11-17psi. Period. I'm doomed to (relatively) crummy filtration with crappy filters owing to a 1-psi increase in a published spec by the people (THAT would be Amsoil, actually) who sell a great filter for $15.00 that I would purchase in a heartbeat owing to the trap of 7 micron particles. That's not bypass filter-grade, but it's a he11 of a lot better than marginal efficiencies of 15-25 micron filtration offered by everyone else that conforms to a lower (and therefore permissable) than OEM spec bypass.
I could use that better oil filtration, too, because Amsoil also refuses to make their Ea synthetic air filters for my car.
Blasted cling-ons.
[ March 19, 2006, 05:55 AM: Message edited by: toocrazy2yoo ]
