Thanks for all the responses! Your lively discussions on the subject brought out some great thoughts and ideas! One thing for sure though, **** happens, no matter how good a product or service is!!
Filter Media Damage
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Filter Guy,
You seem to limit your definition of a defective filter to a filter that is “mismanufactured”, by definition- made incorrectly. You don’t seem to take in to account those filters that may be made correctly, but just designed/built “poorly”
-- The “clicker” style of bypass in the pre-ecore Champ filters may be assembled correctly according to process, but they don’t seem to be actually allowing oil to bypass the filter when needed, consequently allowing too much flow to force its way through the media and cause damage at any weak points in the media.
-- It has been mentioned several times that Champ filters routinely have irregular pleat spacing, which you have explained is due to the process of clamping/gluing the ending pleats together. This means the pleats were glued together according to process, but this is a potential weak spot, which allows excessive deflection of those pleats adjacent to that glued seam, consequently these pleats have been seen to tear during use and will bypass oil from that point on.
-- Those thermal-bonded non-metallic end caps may look ok even if they are barely attached to the ends of the pleats, but if they are only partially sealed, the oil will bypass there for the life of that filter.
When you have tried to get technical about some of these details, you have frequently shown that you actually don’t know what you are talking about. THEN you brag about your high level accomplishments. Do you expect folks to bow down to you or something?
Of course all mfgrs will have some defects, everybody knows that, it just seems that the Champ brand seems to have more than others.
My biggest problem here is that you seem to have no concern for the customer, You are a company man all the way. You see pictures of filters that have failed during service and you refuse to see that they failed- you constantly blame the customer for poor maintenance/service habits as if the poor filter didn’t have a chance. You constantly mention how you know certain things, or certain people, you give advice to take a plant tour, call these numbers, or these people WHEN you have a problem. Do you think we don’t know how to contact a filter manufacturer without you being here? Do you think you are the only person here with multiple degrees and years of experience? It is obvious to me that many of these BITOG folks have very applicable formal and real world education, and experience but just don’t brag about it as much as you do. If people followed your advice they would in all likelihood NOT know they had a problem until some time after it originated and they would be left to deal with it themselves. You are very big on advising people NOT to cut up filters so that warranty issues can be worked, but this will just prevent people from ever knowing that they have a problem with the filter in the first place…not all problems with filters will be immediately obvious (without inspection anyway), they can show up miles down the road and the filter in use at that later time may be fine and the customer is now stuck with the problem.
This is not being constructive here, you always have to have the last word, you always leave some hanging, meaningless rhetorical questions or statements…
I’ll just move on, this is getting old, it is just not worth it to continue with you any more. Have at me, I'll not reply to you any more.
You seem to limit your definition of a defective filter to a filter that is “mismanufactured”, by definition- made incorrectly. You don’t seem to take in to account those filters that may be made correctly, but just designed/built “poorly”
-- The “clicker” style of bypass in the pre-ecore Champ filters may be assembled correctly according to process, but they don’t seem to be actually allowing oil to bypass the filter when needed, consequently allowing too much flow to force its way through the media and cause damage at any weak points in the media.
-- It has been mentioned several times that Champ filters routinely have irregular pleat spacing, which you have explained is due to the process of clamping/gluing the ending pleats together. This means the pleats were glued together according to process, but this is a potential weak spot, which allows excessive deflection of those pleats adjacent to that glued seam, consequently these pleats have been seen to tear during use and will bypass oil from that point on.
-- Those thermal-bonded non-metallic end caps may look ok even if they are barely attached to the ends of the pleats, but if they are only partially sealed, the oil will bypass there for the life of that filter.
When you have tried to get technical about some of these details, you have frequently shown that you actually don’t know what you are talking about. THEN you brag about your high level accomplishments. Do you expect folks to bow down to you or something?
Of course all mfgrs will have some defects, everybody knows that, it just seems that the Champ brand seems to have more than others.
My biggest problem here is that you seem to have no concern for the customer, You are a company man all the way. You see pictures of filters that have failed during service and you refuse to see that they failed- you constantly blame the customer for poor maintenance/service habits as if the poor filter didn’t have a chance. You constantly mention how you know certain things, or certain people, you give advice to take a plant tour, call these numbers, or these people WHEN you have a problem. Do you think we don’t know how to contact a filter manufacturer without you being here? Do you think you are the only person here with multiple degrees and years of experience? It is obvious to me that many of these BITOG folks have very applicable formal and real world education, and experience but just don’t brag about it as much as you do. If people followed your advice they would in all likelihood NOT know they had a problem until some time after it originated and they would be left to deal with it themselves. You are very big on advising people NOT to cut up filters so that warranty issues can be worked, but this will just prevent people from ever knowing that they have a problem with the filter in the first place…not all problems with filters will be immediately obvious (without inspection anyway), they can show up miles down the road and the filter in use at that later time may be fine and the customer is now stuck with the problem.
This is not being constructive here, you always have to have the last word, you always leave some hanging, meaningless rhetorical questions or statements…
I’ll just move on, this is getting old, it is just not worth it to continue with you any more. Have at me, I'll not reply to you any more.
I strongly dissagree with this statement. If an oil filter design was faulty. Especially in the ways that we have seen ripped and torn media. There would be no symptoms that would be detectible from the average consumer. The engine would run fine, there would be no leaks, etc. The only damage to the engine would be that internal parts of the engine would wear quicker than normal. I think we all can agree that torn filter media does not cause catastrophic failure to the engine. It only shortens the life of the engine. Thus, no heads would roll, there would be no inrush in royalty claims, etc. The end result of reducing production costs would be increased profits for the mfg. This is the American way of generating profits. (and I am fine with that) However, we are also able to cut up filters and post and discuss our findings.
Gary Allen,
Simply because that's exactly what you've been installing for a very long time. Any failures will most likely be low cost Champs. You rarely see anything else. When low costs NAPA's get cycled through your clients ...most if not all your discovered failures will be NAPA's.
If you have the desire to index this "change over". You'll note the date you started using NAPA filters ...and then note the date when you start seeing them returning ..and also note when the old Warners start decreasing into single instances a week. This will mean that you've then hit all the customers that represent the majority of your throughput.
In whatever time that takes to happen ...you'll be able to say the exact same thing.
"All the failures that I see are lowball NAPA's"
Perhaps you can see how this is hardly conclusive evidence for opinion formation for anyone who employs critical thinking. All the things that you present ..tend to frustrate the effort to employ it ..to a conspicuous level. You appear to offer only inferential evidence ..and have no desire to make it otherwise.
Again, I thank for that which you present ..even for its limited worth
Gary,
How do you figure we only see Warner filters? Approximately 30% of the filters we get in every day are not ours. Those are the ones we have been focusing on. I am pretty sure of what I am going to find when cutting open Warners, it is boring. I have been focusing on cutting open obscure, off-brand filters to gain more knowledge about them. The whole reason I did this study was to find out the best filter that stood up to ALL conditions. I for one do not choose to blame the consumer for failures like you and Filter Guy. Through hundreds and hundreds of cut open filters FROM ALL MANUFACTURERS we found that the Wix built filters had no problems. The only exception was one 1515 Napa that had been run on a sludgebucket for 15,000 miles and had a torn pleat.
If my posts are of limited worth dont read them!!!
Gary,
I’d have to add, if we do start seeing the “lowball next brand in use” coming back in with failures, then we will all be adding some new “lowball next brand in use” to the list of filters that show lots of failures…
But we won’t just be continuously saying that the filters are failing strictly because of customer abuse…most of us won’t anyway. I just don’t cotton to the idea that always blaming customers for issues is ever going to help anything. Most of us here at BITOG are customers ourselves, shouldn’t we be spending more time identifying brands both high and low level that we should or should not buy? Even LUBEOWNER is a customer...he buys filters and then sells them to his customers with each oil change. If his customers have a filter related problem they will come after him first. There are just too many alternate brands, which even at the low end of grade are obviously just plain made better than others. Cutting filters open, seeing how they are put together, seeing some failures, seeing some trends in particular types of failures is all a good thing to help us compare these things. Some brands may only have particular models with problems, other brands just may be bad across the board, and other brands just may not show many problems period. A BITOG topic like this is a great place to see that stuff. I hope folks continue to show ANY filter failures…I don’t have a preference, I just want to use filters that I DON”T see on here too often.
I’d have to add, if we do start seeing the “lowball next brand in use” coming back in with failures, then we will all be adding some new “lowball next brand in use” to the list of filters that show lots of failures…
But we won’t just be continuously saying that the filters are failing strictly because of customer abuse…most of us won’t anyway. I just don’t cotton to the idea that always blaming customers for issues is ever going to help anything. Most of us here at BITOG are customers ourselves, shouldn’t we be spending more time identifying brands both high and low level that we should or should not buy? Even LUBEOWNER is a customer...he buys filters and then sells them to his customers with each oil change. If his customers have a filter related problem they will come after him first. There are just too many alternate brands, which even at the low end of grade are obviously just plain made better than others. Cutting filters open, seeing how they are put together, seeing some failures, seeing some trends in particular types of failures is all a good thing to help us compare these things. Some brands may only have particular models with problems, other brands just may be bad across the board, and other brands just may not show many problems period. A BITOG topic like this is a great place to see that stuff. I hope folks continue to show ANY filter failures…I don’t have a preference, I just want to use filters that I DON”T see on here too often.
Lets say I have a box of 200 filters from a lube oil change place. There will be a variety of filters. Some will be from what that lube shop uses and some won't(lubeowner stated that 30% are not from his shop).
If you cut open all of them and you get 20 failures, and all the failures are low end champs and frams, you MIGHT have some relevant data.
If 180 of the filters are low end champs and frams you have learned that Low end Champs and Frams fail sometimes. You don't know if Wix's or Purolators are good. BUT, you know for sure that low end champs and Frams fail sometimes.
If 100 of those are Low end Champs and Frams and 30 are Wix and 10 are Mobil 1 and 40 are purolator. Well then you know a little more. You still are not sure that Wix or Purolator are great, but you have more data to support that conclusion.
In the end, no matter how many of each type of filter he cut up, we know that the low end Champs and Frams can fail. Since he has just one failure from the other brands we can conclude that they are better than the Champs. But, we need to know how many of the Wix's, Purolator's, etc he cut up to really get any concrete conclusions from the data.
If you cut open all of them and you get 20 failures, and all the failures are low end champs and frams, you MIGHT have some relevant data.
If 180 of the filters are low end champs and frams you have learned that Low end Champs and Frams fail sometimes. You don't know if Wix's or Purolators are good. BUT, you know for sure that low end champs and Frams fail sometimes.
If 100 of those are Low end Champs and Frams and 30 are Wix and 10 are Mobil 1 and 40 are purolator. Well then you know a little more. You still are not sure that Wix or Purolator are great, but you have more data to support that conclusion.
In the end, no matter how many of each type of filter he cut up, we know that the low end Champs and Frams can fail. Since he has just one failure from the other brands we can conclude that they are better than the Champs. But, we need to know how many of the Wix's, Purolator's, etc he cut up to really get any concrete conclusions from the data.
Gary,
I think you would be hard pressed to find anything that Wix manufactures is "lowball" in quality. If you don't think this is true take a real hard look at the pleat spacing on the "lowball" Champs and then look where the media is torn in my pictures, you will see a pattern. All of the Wix filters seem to have perfect pleat spacing. BTW, I cut open enough Wix filters to have a valid test "pool", believe me. I would not have gone to all this trouble to switch if I thought I was just going to the next "lowball filter".
I think you would be hard pressed to find anything that Wix manufactures is "lowball" in quality. If you don't think this is true take a real hard look at the pleat spacing on the "lowball" Champs and then look where the media is torn in my pictures, you will see a pattern. All of the Wix filters seem to have perfect pleat spacing. BTW, I cut open enough Wix filters to have a valid test "pool", believe me. I would not have gone to all this trouble to switch if I thought I was just going to the next "lowball filter".
Rando and Winston
It is nice to see that you guys use common sense when looking at damaged filters. You described exactly what I have been trying to explain to Filter guy and some other here. The filters are NOT mis-manufacturerd, they are just poorly manufactured. What percentage of filters sold are actually cut open. I am guessing less than .5%. So filter company X figures, hey we can cut cost, there will be media failures, but who is ever going to know. The ones that may actually get cut open and show damage we will just pay the claim and get rid of them. This is my opinion and nothing Filter Guy says is going to change it. I guarantee I have cut open more used oil filters than filter guy has ever seen and I am pretty sure I have a good grasp of what fails and what doesn't. He simply chooses not to believe that he sees. My question is this, which BTW I have posed many times: After cutting open hundreds and hundreds of filters why are the ones failing the low end Champ filters? Is this a coincidence? Rando, I am with you and have not been responding to anything Filter Guy is posting.
It is nice to see that you guys use common sense when looking at damaged filters. You described exactly what I have been trying to explain to Filter guy and some other here. The filters are NOT mis-manufacturerd, they are just poorly manufactured. What percentage of filters sold are actually cut open. I am guessing less than .5%. So filter company X figures, hey we can cut cost, there will be media failures, but who is ever going to know. The ones that may actually get cut open and show damage we will just pay the claim and get rid of them. This is my opinion and nothing Filter Guy says is going to change it. I guarantee I have cut open more used oil filters than filter guy has ever seen and I am pretty sure I have a good grasp of what fails and what doesn't. He simply chooses not to believe that he sees. My question is this, which BTW I have posed many times: After cutting open hundreds and hundreds of filters why are the ones failing the low end Champ filters? Is this a coincidence? Rando, I am with you and have not been responding to anything Filter Guy is posting.
Thanks,
my points exactly!
Hope it benefits someone. At least some of us sleep well at night.
my points exactly!
Hope it benefits someone. At least some of us sleep well at night.
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Let me offer:
If you have the desire to index this "change over". You'll note the date you started using NAPA filters ...and then note the date when you start seeing them returning ..and also note when the old Warners start decreasing into single instances a week. This will mean that you've then hit all the customers that represent the majority of your throughput.
In whatever time that takes to happen ...you'll be able to say the exact same thing.
"All the failures that I see are lowball NAPA's"
Perhaps you can see how this is hardly conclusive evidence for opinion formation for anyone who employs critical thinking. All the things that you present ..tend to frustrate the effort to employ it ..to a conspicuous level. You appear to offer only inferential evidence ..and have no desire to make it otherwise.
Again, I thank for that which you present ..even for its limited worth.
That the exact same statement applies to every filter manufacturer. The likelyhood of discovery is nill with every one of them.
Ditto
Simply because that's exactly what you've been installing for a very long time. Any failures will most likely be low cost Champs. You rarely see anything else. When low costs NAPA's get cycled through your clients ...most if not all your discovered failures will be NAPA's.
If you have the desire to index this "change over". You'll note the date you started using NAPA filters ...and then note the date when you start seeing them returning ..and also note when the old Warners start decreasing into single instances a week. This will mean that you've then hit all the customers that represent the majority of your throughput.
In whatever time that takes to happen ...you'll be able to say the exact same thing.
"All the failures that I see are lowball NAPA's"
Perhaps you can see how this is hardly conclusive evidence for opinion formation for anyone who employs critical thinking. All the things that you present ..tend to frustrate the effort to employ it ..to a conspicuous level. You appear to offer only inferential evidence ..and have no desire to make it otherwise.
Again, I thank for that which you present ..even for its limited worth.
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I'll grant you that pleat spacing is a trade mark of Champ at the joining edge. It's a side effect of the manufacturing process that, at least at one time, had a human mate the media. I believe those are the gaps (the odd spacing of the pleats) that fingers form in the process.
I will still be interested to see what the in service defect/failure rate is for your new line of Proline. I'm sure that, on average, they will perform better than the Warner line and will contour to the added cost that they demand.
..and no, I would never buy a Warner after seeing these images.
[ May 19, 2005, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: Gary Allan ]
I will still be interested to see what the in service defect/failure rate is for your new line of Proline. I'm sure that, on average, they will perform better than the Warner line and will contour to the added cost that they demand.
..and no, I would never buy a Warner after seeing these images.
[ May 19, 2005, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: Gary Allan ]
I will still be interested to see what the in service defect/failure rate is for your new line of Proline. I'm sure that, on average, they will perform better than the Warner line and will contour to the added cost that they demand.
..and no, I would never buy a Warner after seeing these images.
Gary,
Thank you. We are getting somehere now. Please do not take any of my posts as a sinister plot to bash any manufacturer, like I said in my post that was deleted I am just after the same thing as you, the best filter tor the best price.
Still seems to be little discussion of why the Warner filters installed at Lubowner's shop have a higher failure rate than Champ AC's, ST, STP, Bosch, Mobil 1, etc. reported over the years here. What is going on?
Here’s one possibility.
If Warner is the “economy” line of the “economy “ line of Champ filters, I’d bet that the Warner production line operates at a looser manufacturers spec setting than the other Champ brands lines do. That line would have fewer rejects because there would be a larger deviation allowance within spec requirement, a bigger difference between the upper and lower spec limits. The other higher rated Champ brands would have tighter spec requirements.
If other lube-shops used that same Warner line of filters and cut them up after use just as often, they would probably see the same failure rate. I don’t think many lube-shops cut up their used filters though, probably don’t care and don’t want to know anyway.
If Warner is the “economy” line of the “economy “ line of Champ filters, I’d bet that the Warner production line operates at a looser manufacturers spec setting than the other Champ brands lines do. That line would have fewer rejects because there would be a larger deviation allowance within spec requirement, a bigger difference between the upper and lower spec limits. The other higher rated Champ brands would have tighter spec requirements.
If other lube-shops used that same Warner line of filters and cut them up after use just as often, they would probably see the same failure rate. I don’t think many lube-shops cut up their used filters though, probably don’t care and don’t want to know anyway.
And that would cost Champion Labs more in manufacturing costs to maintain a 2nd tier of QC. So, lessee - absorb the additional expense of a 2nd production line with looser QC for a product priced lower at wholesale and retail? Yep - now there's a perfect business model . . .
ok, so it's not the only possibility...are you saying companies don't have several quality lines?
That makes cents. What are the apparant differences between a Warner and an ST/Auto Zone etc Champ?quote:
Originally posted by Ray H:
So, lessee - absorb the additional expense of a 2nd production line with looser QC for a product priced lower at wholesale and retail? Yep - now there's a perfect business model . . .
Anything you can see?
I think I have to disagree with you on this one Ray. I don't think the companies run a second line with less quality control. I think they use the same line to make different quality products.
On Monday they decide to make Bosch Filters. They pull out the Bosch specs, they set up their machines with the Bosch media (there are MANY different qualities), the Bosch drain valves, etc., and run off 50,000 filters or so. Next day, they build Super Tech filters with different media, etc..
There is a clear difference(media, valves, metal) between a Motorcraft FL 400 and it's Purolator counterpart, yet they are both made by Purolator.
There was a guy on the Edmunds board a while back that worked for a media manufacturing company and he said they produced dozens of different media types that were sent out to a single company to be put into the same "can" depending on different customer specs..
So, maybe Warner is a "lesser quality" Champ product??? Who knows.
On Monday they decide to make Bosch Filters. They pull out the Bosch specs, they set up their machines with the Bosch media (there are MANY different qualities), the Bosch drain valves, etc., and run off 50,000 filters or so. Next day, they build Super Tech filters with different media, etc..
There is a clear difference(media, valves, metal) between a Motorcraft FL 400 and it's Purolator counterpart, yet they are both made by Purolator.
There was a guy on the Edmunds board a while back that worked for a media manufacturing company and he said they produced dozens of different media types that were sent out to a single company to be put into the same "can" depending on different customer specs..
So, maybe Warner is a "lesser quality" Champ product??? Who knows.
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That might not be an issue if they aren't produced at the same facility. I dunno the inner workings at Champ ..but I've known other companies that open a facility just for a new line.
I can't really see the cost of manufacturing being that much different from one to the other. We've got to be talking some multiplier with a base of $0.10/filter between the Warner and the M1 ..maybe $0.25. I mean it's basically down to media costs. Every filter must pass through all the process steps anyway, so operating costs aren't an issue. The only other thing that I can think of (and I would surely welcome other ideas) is that the label is assigned via the stastical "proof" of the run. I've seen this in items like dye and food color or food ingredients. If the "batch" is perfect, it gets sent to one customer who demands that ..if it doesn't it gets regraded as an inferior product and sold to a customer that doesn't demand that purity level.
But I can't figure how you could determine that type of thing in process and still have the filter roll into the box with a Warner label on it.
OTOH, aside from the difference in media and other minor issues, the high cost of an M1 may very well be due to the rejection rate on the line. This I saw with medical tubing with very strict FDA standards. A 70% rejection rate wasn't unheard of. That's why, after filtering through the various hands (producer, vendor, distributor, etc.) you're paying $500 for a drinking straw or coffee stirrer sized piece of tubing made out of teflon (FEP) or PVC even.
I can't really see the cost of manufacturing being that much different from one to the other. We've got to be talking some multiplier with a base of $0.10/filter between the Warner and the M1 ..maybe $0.25. I mean it's basically down to media costs. Every filter must pass through all the process steps anyway, so operating costs aren't an issue. The only other thing that I can think of (and I would surely welcome other ideas) is that the label is assigned via the stastical "proof" of the run. I've seen this in items like dye and food color or food ingredients. If the "batch" is perfect, it gets sent to one customer who demands that ..if it doesn't it gets regraded as an inferior product and sold to a customer that doesn't demand that purity level.
But I can't figure how you could determine that type of thing in process and still have the filter roll into the box with a Warner label on it.
OTOH, aside from the difference in media and other minor issues, the high cost of an M1 may very well be due to the rejection rate on the line. This I saw with medical tubing with very strict FDA standards. A 70% rejection rate wasn't unheard of. That's why, after filtering through the various hands (producer, vendor, distributor, etc.) you're paying $500 for a drinking straw or coffee stirrer sized piece of tubing made out of teflon (FEP) or PVC even.
That is a plausible explamation. Assembling filters with different quality components from different lines/soources wouldn't necessarily take any assembly line re-calibration.
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