He has the same oil though for the entire test.
And he expects a filter to "clean" the oil to some sort of significant benefit in 500 miles.
Not likely.
That is the flawed part of the test.
Let's look at lab tests on any of these brands.
Fresh pure uncontaminated fluid. Particle count test to confirm no contaminant.
Then contaminant is added at timed intervals. Particle counts upstream and then down stream to determine the effectiveness of the filter media. At the end of the test there is also a capacity in grams retained by the media.
Notice any difference in his test?
Fully contaminated oil. Where is the benchmark of the oil before the test to determine a particle count?
How much added contaminant is generated over 500 miles? Unknown because of the wear within the engine. Due to variable stresses on the motor when he drives it, the motor will have different amounts of wear. Not to mention he was topping up with used oil ( and no particle counts on that). Did he shake the used oil to make sure any contaminant in the used oil that may have settled was dispersed? Doubt it. But , unless I missed something, he had no clue how much "extra" contaminant he was adding. So each filter could have seen different amounts of added contaminant to the oil from topping up over and above different wear rates from how he drove each 500 mile stint.
Did any of the labs determine how much, by grams, each filter in his test retained?
What if the filter with the worst PPM in the oil sample retained the most contaminant? It was doing it's job better than the others was it not by retaining more of the contaminant? The fact that the oil analysis said the PPM's were higher only showed he was getting more wear or had topped up with dirtier ( more comtaminanted) oil----based soley on a 500 mile stint.
He has 1/2 of the equation (at best). A particle count. He has no clue how effective the media was because he doesn't know--what it removed-- by way of grams of contaminant taken out of the fluid.
If the lab would have weighed a clean element cut out of a new filter. Then dried the used element and then weighed it--that would have been hand-grenade close to determining how much the filter removed. ( bearing in mind individual pleat counts and variances in amount of plastisol dispensed into the endcaps).
Each lab could have also done a restriction test on the element to see if there were any differences.
However, the labs he chose only did --oil analysis--- as far as what I read. None of them had the capability to test the filter. Either that or he never expressed that he sent the "filter" to the labs to be tested. He only sent used oil to different labs to verify his particle counts.
Now---still believe his results?
