Fram Endurance / Walmart End of Life ?

The tiny 8 inlet holes of the Purolator versus the massive holes on a Toyota Denso filter or the Fram Endurance makes he hesitant to use the Purolator…. This aside from my aversion to the flat spring. The difference in surface area for oil inflow looks to be easily 3-fold. This may not be a bottleneck but the inlet holes on an Endurance are massive and put my mind at ease.
The base inlet holes aren't a "bottleneck" to flow. Tbe media is much more restrictive to flow. Even though it might look like the inlet holes are restrictive, the dP difference across the base plate hole design difference is minor.
 
The base inlet holes aren't a "bottleneck" to flow..........
But as seen, many get the warm fuzzies from seeing lots of inlets and the larger they are the better that feeling. Newest ACDelco vs previous ACDelco with the auxiliary plate a great example. Very little doubt media the same, but main comment seen for the new is 'flow is better.' Tough to convince some, when it comes to filter inlets, their eyes don't tell the whole story.
 
I'm not a particular Purolator fan, but I will stand up a bit for the planar spring design because it makes better use of the available axial length of the can.

If you look at most metal-end cap, coil-spring filters, the bottom 1/2" of can is wasted potential media area because it's just the coil spring. A good, flat-ish leaf spring setup (filtech and some Mahle, ) will give more potential media area.


I can't for the life of me figure out why filter makers make the bottom metal endplate perfectly flat (with the bypass) and THEN put a coil spring underneath it. That wastes precious axial length.

A properly designed bypass valve spring can be placed on the INSIDE of the filter cylinder and not take up any more space. This is the case with the FRAM Endurance.
 
But as seen, many get the warm fuzzies from seeing lots of inlets and the larger they are the better that feeling. Newest ACDelco vs previous ACDelco with the auxiliary plate a great example. Very little doubt media the same, but main comment seen for the new is 'flow is better.' Tough to convince some, when it comes to filter inlets, their eyes don't tell the whole story.
Yeah, not many people can look at something like the base plate (or center tube) holes and know what the dP will be without actually running the numbers. Of course seeing larger and more holes does give someone the "warm fuzzies", but it totally deceiving. For instance, I ran the dP vs flow numbers for cold (500 cSt) and hot (15 cSt) oil on a Fram XG3600 that has 8 holes that are only 0.20 inch in diameter. Compared to some other base plate hole designs, the XG3600 looks "flow restrictive", but there really isn't much flow restriction on the base plate. The center tube has even less dP vs flow. The media is the main contributor to flow restriction.

Here's the results of the calculations. The oil pump would be way into pressure relief in the cold oil case, so the flow through the filter and oiling system should be well below 10 GPM. With hot oil, even at 10 GPM the dP across those "visually tiny" holes is only 1.5 PSI. The PD oil pump doesn't care.

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So , with WM ending the Fram Endurance partnership in favor of the new gold Purolator 20 K oil filter - does this mark the end of the Endurance line for Fram ? *I believe either Fram couldn’t meet the pricing pressure from WM or possibly failing to reliably bring the Endurance to market at the given price was it’s downfall. *Do we know if the Fram Titanium sold at auto parts stores suffers the same reliability concerns as the Fram Endurance ?
Still available at Walmart on line...no issues.
 
The tiny 8 inlet holes of the Purolator versus the massive holes on a Toyota Denso filter or the Fram Endurance makes he hesitant to use the Purolator…. This aside from my aversion to the flat spring. The difference in surface area for oil inflow looks to be easily 3-fold. This may not be a bottleneck but the inlet holes on an Endurance are massive and put my mind at ease.
Not flow volume but flow dispersal, like the Toyota N1 base went to long oval shaped holes from round holes. In practice it seems to make no difference, but clearly there is a difference or Toyota, Denso really, wouldn’t bother with the change.
 
All valid comments - thanks ! It’s too bad that due to shrinkflation , cost cutting , reduced quality , etc. that we are left with few really good oil filters in 2025. Quality construction , filtering efficiency and high
flow rate appear to now be out of the grasp of many oil filter makers - or they simply no longer care (in the name of max profitability).
I agree with you, it's difficult to find quality filters right now. In my opinion, the new Mobil 1 filters that recently came out are the new ticket. Running one now. Great construction, about $11 at Walmart.
 
I agree with you, it's difficult to find quality filters right now. In my opinion, the new Mobil 1 filters that recently came out are the new ticket. Running one now. Great construction, about $11 at Walmart.
The new Mobil 1 made in Asia is basically the same as all the similarly made brands under the PGI umbrella (but Mobil is not under PGI). The new Mobil 1 is under Highline Warren, and the Mobil 1 use to be under M+H before that.
 
The new Mobil 1 made in Asia is basically the same as all the similarly made brands under the PGI umbrella (but Mobil is not under PGI). The new Mobil 1 is under Highline Warren, and the Mobil 1 use to be under M+H before that.
Yes, I used to avoid them while they were Mann+Hummel. I ran Wix for awhile, but when those started having issues, I stopped buying M+H filters in general.
 
Not flow volume but flow dispersal, like the Toyota N1 base went to long oval shaped holes from round holes. In practice it seems to make no difference, but clearly there is a difference or Toyota, Denso really, wouldn’t bother with the change.
dP vs flow through the base plate will be proportional to the size and number of holes in the base plate. The base plate hole change Denso made only befits slightly if there is more total flow area as a result, maybe they reduced the dP by 0.5 PSI at high flow. Oil distributed after the oil goes through the base plate is just fine with a large gamut of options of base plate hole designs. Fluid always flows from a higher to lower pressure regions, and that's what makes it distribute.
 
Yes, I used to avoid them while they were Mann+Hummel. I ran Wix for awhile, but when those started having issues, I stopped buying M+H filters in general.
Because Wix also became M+H owned. Why NAPA also dropped M+H supplied filters under the NAPA label.
 
dP vs flow through the base plate will be proportional to the size and number of holes in the base plate. The base plate hole change Denso made only befits slightly if there is more total flow area as a result, maybe they reduced the dP by 0.5 PSI at high flow. Oil distributed after the oil goes through the base plate is just fine with a large gamut of options of base plate hole designs. Fluid always flows from a higher to lower pressure regions, and that's what makes it distribute.
The oil is distributed more evenly with the slots. Less oil turning and hitting the sides of pleats rather than straight on. The oil streams are wider. I don’t think Denso was thinking about DP at all.
Fram seems to be trying the same thing with an abundance of holes on some filter bases.
 
The oil is distributed more evenly with the slots. Less oil turning and hitting the sides of pleats rather than straight on. The oil streams are wider. I don’t think Denso was thinking about DP at all.
Fram seems to be trying the same thing with an abundance of holes on some filter bases.
Every engineer that designs an oil filter is thinking about dP of the base plate, media, center tube and bypass valve. ISO 4548 even has sections that the dP of each filter element to be measured. There is zero evidence that "lack of oil distribution" is a problem with any base plate hole design. The main reason is to fool people in to believing the filter "flows more" by seeing more and larger base plate holes, and to gain a hair less dP across the base plate. As already shown in this thread (post 45), even a Fram with visually small holes only has around 1.5 PSI of dP at 10 GPM with 15 cSt oil viscosity. If it had more and larger holes, the dP might go down to 1.0 PSI at 10 GPM.
 
Every engineer that designs an oil filter is thinking about dP of the base plate, media, center tube and bypass valve. ISO 4548 even has sections that the dP of each filter element to be measured. There is zero evidence that "lack of oil distribution" is a problem with any base plate hole design. The main reason is to fool people in to believing the filter "flows more" by seeing more and larger base plate holes, and to gain a hair less dP across the base plate. As already shown in this thread (post 45), even a Fram with visually small holes only has around 1.5 PSI of dP at 10 GPM with 15 cSt oil viscosity. If it had more and larger holes, the dP might go down to 1.0 PSI at 10 GPM.
This 5/16's ball passage is more than enough that feeds my Ford 2.3 duratec, hard to believe but true, this passage is large enough to feed a V-8, makes me laugh when people look at oil filters and think the holes are too small or there is not enough of them. The two ports are hooked to a highly flow restricted bypass filter.
Derale 2.webp
 
Every engineer that designs an oil filter is thinking about dP of the base plate, media, center tube and bypass valve. ISO 4548 even has sections that the dP of each filter element to be measured. There is zero evidence that "lack of oil distribution" is a problem with any base plate hole design. The main reason is to fool people in to believing the filter "flows more" by seeing more and larger base plate holes, and to gain a hair less dP across the base plate. As already shown in this thread (post 45), even a Fram with visually small holes only has around 1.5 PSI of dP at 10 GPM with 15 cSt oil viscosity. If it had more and larger holes, the dP might go down to 1.0 PSI at 10 GPM.
I wasn’t talking about baseplate pressure changes. The oil is dispersed more evenly and directed at the pleats more square on with slots or oval holes or plenty of any shaped holes. Much better imo.
There are so many fittings and pressure changes in an engine, base plate change in pressure isn’t going to be one they worry about. In fact many oil filters meet the base plate spec, all of them actually. It only needs total holes to be bigger than the outlet pipe and there is no problem.
 
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