"Many of us are on every other oil change for the filter,"
I have been following the oil filter topic on this site for some time and I have not read many posts saying every other oil change for the filter. Maybe I just missed those.
If this is common practice among those who have extensive experience, I would consider changing my every oil change/ new filter routine.
Well I'm sure this will open many cans of worms, but we have some papers indicating that some retained oil (~15%) will yield lower wear numbers because of already activated AW compounds. Seems these compounds are unique to each engine and operating environment. So Shannow and I are staggering the changes of oil and filters to keep that scenario going.
The State of Cali, Fleet Admin who administers some 10,000 vehicles of all types ran studies in the 1990's on cost effectiveness and efficacy for lubrication schemes in vehicles. Excluding severe service, the studies showed that the most cost effective program was oil changes at 6,000 miles and filters every other time. So this takes into account retained oil every other interval. The majority of their fleet goes over 200,000 miles before auction and are usually running fine when they go out the door.
Filters can go a long way, as long as the oil is not too far into oxidative thickening ... Modern synthetic media filters have plenty of thermal cycle capacity to last a l-o-n-g time on a vehicle. I have run some filters up to five years on seldom used trucks, and they worked out fine. Changing filters each time is like 3,000 mile oil changes. It's OK, but why ... There is some evidence to suggest it might be better to do it other ways
The only true way to do this is like we did in marine. You install gauges on both side of the filter string and monitor for pressure differential. If you see more than 5 PSI across the filters (hot), they need to be changed. Until they do, they stay in place ...
That is way to complex for most folks, so we have the very likely scenario where filters are changed way too often ...