ST 3600 vs FL 400s

[Hirev]

I went to Wal Mart to get and try the longer Super Tech 3600 oil filter for a Toyota. Some people here seem to think they are a OK filter. When I opened the box I was greeted by Made in Mexico on the filter. That was a big time turn off. It was $2.07.

I moved down to look at the MC FL-400S For $2.77 I got a Made in USA and silicone valve. I payed the $.70 more and got the MC. Did I do good?

Are the MC FL-400S any good?

 

[T-Keith]

Yep, both good filters. I'd pay the extra 70 cents for the Motorcraft.

 

[427Z06]

Hmmm...I thought Filter guy recently stated that Champion makes all the Super Tech filters for Walmart.

Hey Filter guy, waz up with this?

Anyways, that MC FL-400S for $2.77 is a good filter at a great price.

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by 427Z06:
Hmmm...I thought Filter guy recently stated that Champion makes all the Super Tech filters for Walmart.

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It was made by their Mexican subsidiary, El Campeón

One thing that is for sure in the filter business is that you can't count on a particular manufacturer making the same model and part number house brand over a long period of time.

 

[Ray H]

Champion Labs does make Super Tech filters - in factories the company operates in both the U.S. and Mexico.

 

[Points]

I use the FL-400S on my Vibe with the Toy. 1.8L motor. Its better than the small filter was on there. And yes, MC is a better filter than ST.

[ November 16, 2004, 08:20 PM: Message edited by: Points ]

 

[Filter guy]

Champ bought a Mexican filter Company about 5 years ago. Part of the purchase was to expand their offerings in Mexico and be able to ship filters into Central and South America. US made product has higher import duties when shipping to the Countries South of us.

Another part of the agreement was that a maximum 20% of production could come back across the border.

Champ has upgraded the manufacturing process to what they do in the US. And the plant in Mexico has a US production manager that moved from Champ to there to run the place. It is now ISO9000 registered.

Just put a ST3600 on my Ford. As WalMart did the oil change I never noticed if it was made in Mexico or not.

You may also, if you own a German made car, notice that Champ imports filters from Germany
for certain applications as they have an agreement with one of the top filter companies over there.

You may or may not be aware that Fram uses product built in Brazil as does Wix.

 

[FL-400S]

I pay for the FL-400S over the ST3600 on my Tercel. Both way better than the stock ST4968.

 

[Hirev]

Thanks for the info. They must sell a lot of the ST 3600s at Wal Mart I counted 32 of them on the shelf. I opened up around 10 of them and they were all from Mexico.

Filter guy do oil filters have a 3 year shelf life like air filters? I was thinking I should stock up on US made oil filters the way things are going.

 

[T-Keith]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Filter guy:
Champ bought a Mexican filter Company about 5 years ago. Part of the purchase was to expand their offerings in Mexico and be able to ship filters into Central and South America. US made product has higher import duties when shipping to the Countries South of us.

Another part of the agreement was that a maximum 20% of production could come back across the border.

Champ has upgraded the manufacturing process to what they do in the US. And the plant in Mexico has a US production manager that moved from Champ to there to run the place. It is now ISO9000 registered.

Just put a ST3600 on my Ford. As WalMart did the oil change I never noticed if it was made in Mexico or not.

You may also, if you own a German made car, notice that Champ imports filters from Germany
for certain applications as they have an agreement with one of the top filter companies over there.

You may or may not be aware that Fram uses product built in Brazil as does Wix.

---

So this would explain the Mexican AC-Delco filter sold at Advanced Auto Parts. I noticed the construction was a little different then normal Champion filters, so I was curious if it was still them.

-T

 

[Filter guy]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hirev:
Thanks for the info. They must sell a lot of the ST 3600s at Wal Mart I counted 32 of them on the shelf. I opened up around 10 of them and they were all from Mexico.

Filter guy do oil filters have a 3 year shelf life like air filters? I was thinking I should stock up on US made oil filters the way things are going.

---

Depending on the day you talk to a filter company, you may be told 3 years for spin-ons.

When I was at Champ we said up to 7 years. Maybe as long as 10 if you don't store it in your garage.

What deteriorates media is moisture ( besides a dusty environment before it is used). Because an air filter is not protected by a metal shell, even if it's in the chipboard carton that it comes in, the moisture in the air is absorbed by the media over time.

A spin on has it's inlet holes, outlet hole with center tube down the middle. So there is less "air flow" through the spin-on. Plus oil filter media has more resins in the paper media which helps to somewhat prevent the media from absorbing moisture out of the air.

So if you store a filter, any filter, inside in a more controlled environment as opposed to outside in a unheated garage, you'll extend the filter life. How much is anybody's guess. That's why engineers put the limits on it that they do because they have no control over how a filter is stored once it leaves the factory.

If you use an "old" filter that been sitting around for a few years, what you don't know and a company can't tell you is where the media is restriction wise without testing it. And i've never seen someone send one back to the lab to test first, then use it.

I have seen the lab test an old filter that has sat on a distributors shelf for 5 years or 15 just to test their theories. So engineering err's on the cautious side keeping in mind the OEM's oil change intervals.

Hope this helps..

 

[427Z06]

quote:

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Originally posted by Filter guy:
It is now ISO9000 registered.

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Having worked in a few places that were ISO 9000 certified, let me just say that it doesn't insure all products produced there will be of the highest quality, just that there are a sufficient number of people there that understand what it takes to build quality products.

 

[Filter guy]

It beats not being ISO 9000 registered.

Many people have the misconception ISO 9000 registration means you never build something that fails. That is wrong.

What ISO 9000 regitration means is that you have the quality control systems ( amoungts other things) in place to identify problems and correct them.

It also means that you answer on a timely basis any customer complaints and document them.

For those unfamilar with ISO 9000 registration, there are 3 types of registration. ISO 9001, ISO 9002, ISO 9003.

ISO 9001 is for someone who manufactures a product.

ISO 9002 is for someone who distributes a product, warehouses, or supplies a component product to a manufacturer ( like pistons but you don't build the engine).

ISO 9003 is for someone who provides a service to a manufacturer. ( like security, secretarial, janitorial, transportation, etc)

Notice I say registration, a number of companies misconstrue ISO and claim they are "certified". Technically, they are not certified, they are registered as being in compliance with ISO. You can lose the registration as well.

It is very costly to do. You get one chance at being registered. If you fail, you have to pay again to have the auditors come in to verify you can be registered to ISO.

That's why companies tout they are registered to ISO 9001-2-3.

 

[XS650]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Filter guy:


For those unfamilar with ISO 9000 registration, there are 3 types of registration. ISO 9001, ISO 9002, ISO 9003.

ISO 9001 is for someone who manufactures a product.

ISO 9002 is for someone who distributes a product, warehouses, or supplies a component product to a manufacturer ( like pistons but you don't build the engine).

ISO 9003 is for someone who provides a service to a manufacturer. ( like security, secretarial, janitorial, transportation, etc)

---

Some minor corrections.

Pre year 2000:

9001 Design. Development, Production, Installation and Servicing

9002. Production, Installation and Servicing. Basically, this if the same as 9001 except it doesn't cover the design process.

9003. Final Inspection and test.

I checked online to be sure I had it right (I did for pre 2000) and found out things have changed.

Now, there is only 9001 and 9004 that are active in the 9000 series.

9001,2 and 3 have been rolled into 9001 and you use the parts that are applicable.

9004 provides guidance for continual improvement of your quality management system to benefit all parties through sustained customer satisfaction.

It is possible to legitimately build crap under ISO 9000 as long as your plan is laid out correctly and calls for building of crap in a specific way.

 

[427Z06]

Thanks XS650, your post was much more accurate and informative on the concept I was clumsily trying to convey.

 

[Hirev]

As one who spent much time in the aerospace industry. I've seem many programs come and go. Many people actually call them "program of the month". Many of them cause much economic damage before the dust settles.

They never tell you till after the fact how many business failed because of programs of the mouth. "JIT" or Just in time or Just missed the truck as it came to be called bankrupted some of suppliers in the company I used to work for within 3 years. Company's that were around for decades.

This was admitted by a guy in a class who sold my company JIT and the bankrupted suppliers 3 or 4 years earlier and was now pushing a modified version of JIT. The modified version was just about what we used to do before this guy came along. And they paid this guy to tell us what to do, go figure.

Quality comes with pride and knowledge of his or her job. Its not something more bureaucrats can solve. Unless they want to address the pride and knowledge issues. They rarely do in programs of the month.

ISO 9000 has been dumped by Toyota. HERE

Want to read more on ISO 9000 Here

 

[XS650]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hirev:
As one who spent much time in the aerospace industry. I've seem many programs come and go. Many people actually call them "program of the month". Many of them cause much economic damage before the dust settles.

---

I was exposed to several of those. During one presentation the program peddler said "I know what's going through your minds, you think this is just another program of the month. Let me assure you this one works."


One of the managers I worked with piped up and said "That's what the last guy said."

The division I worked for before I retired was going theought the 9001 certification process when I retired. If done right, it has some value. We decided to take a thorough approach to 9001 and make it work for us. Some of the good that came out of it was that we rethought how we did lot of things and we able to steamline design and approval processes. It's not uncommon for a defense contractor to be able to actually reduce paperwork when they do a good job of 9001.

Our sister division on the East Coast took the more typical quick and dirty approach and just caused themselves more paperwork headaches with no improvement in how they did things.

Had our division spent the same amount of time and money on improving things on our own, we could have made a bigger imporvement than we did with 9001, but upper mangement never would have allowed that

 

[Filter guy]

XS650..thanx for the corrections. As I was doing it from, albeit, old memory before I took off for my sales calls this morning. I went through it, was the sales & marketing department representative back in 1997-8, when Champ were in ISO9000 registration mode. And what boring meetings they were with the ISO consultants before we went through the actual registration audit.

Obviously things have changed since then and I didn't have time to do the research this morning.

 

[427Z06]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hirev:
As one who spent much time in the aerospace industry. I've seem many programs come and go. Many people actually call them "program of the month". Many of them cause much economic damage before the dust settles.

They never tell you till after the fact how many business failed because of programs of the mouth. "JIT" or Just in time or Just missed the truck as it came to be called bankrupted some of suppliers in the company I used to work for within 3 years. Company's that were around for decades.

This was admitted by a guy in a class who sold my company JIT and the bankrupted suppliers 3 or 4 years earlier and was now pushing a modified version of JIT. The modified version was just about what we used to do before this guy came along. And they paid this guy to tell us what to do, go figure.

Quality comes with pride and knowledge of his or her job. Its not something more bureaucrats can solve. Unless they want to address the pride and knowledge issues. They rarely do in programs of the month.

ISO 9000 has been dumped by Toyota. HERE

---

Having experienced Quality Circles, TQM, Six-Sigma, Digital Six-Sigma, ISO 9000 registration, etc, I'd have to say that quality that "comes with pride and knowledge of his or her job" has been put on the back burner. Any quality improvement attained, if any, by the programs mentioned above is usually wiped out by manangement ignoring the quality improvements that can come from the people actually doing the work while they concentrate instead on finding "new and better" ways of controlling people.

quote:

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Want to read more on ISO 9000 Here

---

This was a good read. I believe that managers of today should be locked in a room and be forced to read Tom Peters' and Deming's books before the remainder of the U.S. manufacturing base is moved overseas to exploit cheap labor and cover up the 40 years of management incompetence in this country.

And Filter guy, we'll have to agree to disagree that ISO 9000 registration is better than nothing.

 

[labman]

Back when SQC was the hot item, one of the presenters was talking about this machine that cut auto door weather stripping to length. Big SQC victory. They proved the variability of the machine was greater than the usable limits of length. The company then replaced the machine with one that could cut the same length twice in a row. I strongly suspect whoever was in charge of adjusting the machine had been telling them that for years without any chart. All the MBA's didn't listen.

When JIT was a hot item, I got a magazine with a picture of a boat sailing down a river. The top picture showed the boat going over the rocks on a cushion of high water. The lower picture showed lower water and the boat zigzagging around the rocks. Inside it explained with high inventory, there are problems covered up with it. Once you lower the inventory, you find the rocks. My thought was that somebody knew the rocks were there, but nobody listened to him.

I have found the guys on the floor that are out there 8 hours a day, know what is happening. They may not have the best solution, but they can define the problem. I came in on a Saturday when the plant was down for maintenance. I found a magnetic grate we had on a machine to protect it from ingesting chunks of iron almost clogged with stuff. I collected some and asked the guys to clean the rest of it off. Monday morning, before we started up, I called the operators, maintenance, and forman into a meeting and showed them the stuff in the cup and said we need to figure out what it was and where it came from. John took one look at it and said ''It look lik da color concentrate we been usin.'' I caught my self just in time to keep from explaining how little intelligence anybody would have to have to say that. Then I looked at it. Apparently the brown color concentrate contained magnetic iron oxide. Problem solved. I bragged on John.

After Thompson Weiman came to my factory to see what my people found in their Atomite, they did some more checking and discovered many customers were having the same problem. I was the big frog is a rather small puddle. I spent a lot of time out on the floor listening to my people and looking at stuff. I could also get to people who could make things happen. Unfortunately very few managers are allowed to spend as much time on, on time shipment of on spec product as I was.