Baldwin alternatives for my Acura. Poor micron rating?
- Thread starter RH43
- Start date
Why use the Baldwin ?? What advantage does it offer ? These people saying they match OEM but OEM has at minimum a silicon adbv where as the Baldwin just gives you the cheaper nitrile plus they have terrible QC IMO. Any Premium Guard extended product and especially a Pentius XL filter will blow the Baldwin away without breaking a sweat. Way better QC and better filtration and both adbv AND gasket are silicone.
That’s ugly…..
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- Sep 1, 2024
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Looks like your Baldwin 1402 had very good real world efficiency, which is the only efficiency that matters. Seems you were already on a good plan.
What's you're measure and proof of "real world efficiency"?
It's a Honda so it will last a long time with any decent filter. If you bought a bunch of Baldwins just keep using then until they are gone. If you need to buy more filters, I concur with the above suggestion for Carquest. Or check Amazon for Ecogard X4610. They were recently on sale for $2xx (identical to Carquest but with a nitrile ADBV).
The current American made products have iffy QC.
The current American made products have iffy QC.
Ive always used Baldwin cuz thats what we sell at the store i work at i can get em for like $5. I had always heard they were a good brand and american made so i didnt look much into their micron ratings and that sort of thing. But i know alot of guys who have always used those oem honda fram ones for hundreds of thousands of miles with no issues i figure surely these baldwins are at least as good as those
If a man aged 105 came to you asking for advice on how to live long, what would you tell him?
BTW-- baldwin filters are cheap commodity filters. Common in industry because they are cheap and sufficient. They are NOT a premium filter, and generally use 1970s media technology unimpeded by progress.
@RH43 ,Obviously, your Baldwins have done the job. Use them up. The video that @DannyM shows the Baldwins are a little sloppy these days. The Microguard/ Carquest Premium have better quality control these days and are part of the micron rating race which Baldwin is not. It is too bad we have to go to Vietnam to get a prettier looking filter. I would use up your Baldwins, they have worked fine for 250,000 miles so far, if you want a prettier filter that is in the micron rating race after they are used up, go for it then.
@Hohn , it is not that Baldwin is not capable of making 2-micron absolute fiberglass or fiberglass blend media filters, they do it all the time if that is what the OEM specs are. Some of the multi-million-dollar equipment Baldwin protects around the world uses the tighter specifications on the filters. I defend them because I was in all of their manufacturing facilities for years delivering their steel and hauling their finished products around the USA to their distributors or shipping docks. I know the people. Plus, they are made in USA. I find it sad their quality control has decided to let more of their ugly, sloppy black filter gluing be allowed to pass through the assembly line, it looks bad. As you said, they meet OEM specs, they never entered the Micron rating race however, of the retail sales market. The only thing special about them is their heavier than most construction, sturdier. They have stuck to the internal pressure relief valve that actually works, as opposed to the Fram style with the pressure relief valve integrated into the leaf spring, suffering from many that allow oil bypassing. I realize their micron rating sounds bad, and it sucks because of it, the reason those numbers are there is because that is what the equipment manufacturer wants the specs to be. I am sorry I have to attempt to defend Baldwin, I know some of the people and they want to and try to build a decent quality effective product.
Arent there some possible cons to these newer extended life filters that filter so well such as restricted flow? Just reading thro reviews on some of the ones mentioned theres always a few negative reviews where someone mentions issues with oil pressure etc, only to switch to something like a regular wix or whatever and its back to normal.
@RH43 I have entered this argument many times, and it has been argued on Bitog. I am not an engineer, so I can't give you numbers, but I can give you my opinion, like many others here do. Flow and micron rating does matter. There are thousands, possibly millions of vehicles out there that ran 250,000 400,000 miles using nothing, but the OEM oil filters, a quality brand name engine oil with 3-5 thousand mile or 6-month oil change intervals, whichever comes first, especially if you have a lot of city, stop start cold weather driving. But yes, with tighter micron ratings, you can have a reduced flow rate. That can be compensated for by increasing the overall size of the filter media surface area. Actually, there is an alternative people don't talk about much, install a bypass oil filter. Amsoil sells one and there are others out there too.
I always prefer MiUSA when I can for obvious reasons. But Baldwins today just aren't cost effective. The B7318s I bought out of curiosity cost $20 each. And when you cut them open, you find plain cellulose media, very irregular pleats and large pleat gaps along with sloppy glue. I can get that in a cheap Chinese Pentius for $2 each, although the Pentius appears better made and has more media. Cutting that B7318 open left me with a distinct "you gotta be kidding me, that all there is to this expensive filter?"
I will say the Baldwin has a robust can and endplate. But the Fleetguard filters I bought also to compare were even stronger, had superior media (and more of it), and notably better quality. And they cost less. It could be unique to the M20x1.5 SKU that works on Hondas, but I doubt it.
It's not a "micron race" it's "progress." I'm not putting a cheap cellulose paper filter on an old muscle car just because it came with it in 1970. And I'm certainly not tracking down some vintage Wolf's Head oil for the purpose, either.
Fiberglass is not really "Advanced" media and hasn't been since the 1990s. It's really only used now in hydraulic filters.
Baldwin's filters are sufficient and common on industrial products where sufficient-at-a-cost-the-boss-approves is the name of the game. But one can do much better for less money in almost every case.
That's not a reflection on the good people that work there. It just means the filters are overpriced underperformers relative to other options in the market. At least that was my conclusion based on one particular SKU that I explored for my personal usage.
It's often the case the extended life filter get that long life by doing a poor job of filtering. The media doesn't plug for a long time when it barely catches anything.
Filter restriction cannot lower oil pressure unless you're talking high RPM and about the lube pump being on its pressure relief.
There is no downside to a premium media filter (<25 micron at 95% or better) unless you just think it's a wasteful to have less contamination in your oil because you really didn't need that engine to last that long anyway.
Actually, I agree for the most part. They could build a better filter with better QC. I suppose it is basically a money game. It is hard for USA manufacturers to compete with manufacturing cost, wages and employee benefits of other countries.
It depends on how the media is designed and how much total media area there is, but for the most part there's no such thing as "flow over efficiency" where it actually matters. It's true that less efficient filters can have less pressure drop (dP) vs flow, but there are also filters that are high efficiency that flow just as well or better than a lower efficiency filter.
At high flow rates with hot oil when the engine is near or at redline, the pressure drop difference of only a few PSI between oil filters isn't going to really matter because there will still be more than adequate oil flow. A dP difference of a few PSI at 10 GPM isn't going to really matter. The only way to determine how an oil filter flows (ie, its dP vs flow curve) is to measure it. Can't just always conclude that a more efficient oil filter has more dP vs flow. The cases where someone changes a filter and the oil pressure magically changes need to be looked at carefully to see what else is going on.
In this data below, the Fram EG and TG are the two most "flow restrictive" filters, yet millions are used and doubt they are "blowing up" engines due to having a few more PSI of dP on normally driven vehicles. Obviously, if you're going to be racing at really high RPM then it would be better to choose a filter that's on the lower end of the dP vs flow scale to better keep the filter out of bypass mode. Also, the bypass valve will open if the dP is too high, and that helps keeps the oil flow going to the engine, but ideally you want to avoid filter bypass events as much as possible.
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They also shed more already captured debris as they load up, and especially as the flow rate going through the media increases, like when the engine is at high RPM and oil flow rate.
Neither one of those would be a Honda specific application
To build on that, the Baldwin B243 is for Motorcraft FL-400s applications, while the Baldwin B7491 is for Motorcraft FL-910s applications. Both of those Baldwins have different micron ratings/specs.
If indeed Baldwin matches OEM specifications this could tell us the actual specifications of an OEM filter the mfg chooses not to publish.
Not a perfect example since Ford treats those two as interchangeable. lol
