I cut open my filter today (FL1A) after only being installed for 3 weeks/500 miles. I thought I saw some metal flakes on the dipstick so decided to pop the filter and inspect. When I pulled the filter out of the can it felt extremely brittle and hard. In fact it was solid, like a lump of sugar or something- there's no way any oil was getting through that portion of the filter. When I tried to pry the folds of the filter apart to inspect in between them, the cardboard completely crumbled apart in my fingers with almost no effort! I've never seen this happen before. As I rotated it and checked all the folds of the filter I noticed that about half of it felt flexible and normal, and the other half was super hard and brittle... I'm stunned as to what could cause this to happen.
On a side note I frequently cut open and inspect oil filters due to my job working on aircraft. I sometimes cut open 6-7 filters a day, for 10 1/2 years now, and I've NEVER seen a filter do anything like this. At the same time, I've never seen a filter with such thin, flimsy, weak, filter material either. The ones that go on aircraft are about 4X thicker filter material, and the oil they use is usually straight 50 weight, but sometimes 15W50. The filters I normally inspect are Champion filters.
I've also cut open other auto filters, a few times a year, and they always had flexible media, and never as thin as this motorcrap filter was. I'm not only unimpressed with the quality of this filter, I'm kind of worried for other people that maybe a bad batch was made and sold to the public.
On a side note I frequently cut open and inspect oil filters due to my job working on aircraft. I sometimes cut open 6-7 filters a day, for 10 1/2 years now, and I've NEVER seen a filter do anything like this. At the same time, I've never seen a filter with such thin, flimsy, weak, filter material either. The ones that go on aircraft are about 4X thicker filter material, and the oil they use is usually straight 50 weight, but sometimes 15W50. The filters I normally inspect are Champion filters.
I've also cut open other auto filters, a few times a year, and they always had flexible media, and never as thin as this motorcrap filter was. I'm not only unimpressed with the quality of this filter, I'm kind of worried for other people that maybe a bad batch was made and sold to the public.
