Car_Almond

Posters on this thread have mentioned "no oil related failures". I agree you could use just about any filter you wanted to, yes, including the infamous Chinese counterfeits that BMW and Mann made the youtube video about, and you probably would not see a failure.

My point is that I'm a car nut looking for higher performance. Just knowing the expensive BMW I have has something in it that will minimize wear through better particle removal means the engine should last longer... No engine all-out failures are feared here.

Up to this point I've been using Mann HU-816x filters. I'm about to do an annual oil change, and I'll bet its not collapsed. I won't be able to tell if it avoided being clogged (???), or if the pressure drop got to be too much so it had the habit of going into bypass at startup. All unknowns. More pleats at a given porosity size is better. I wish BMW would take more of a leadership position and come out with better evaluations of the premium oil filters out there.

ColonelLonewolf

Not sure on the BMW specific filters but on others the napa filters are made by WIX.

tonyb635

Did I read your post correctly? You say you are a car nut and really trying to find the best possible oil filter out there with the most pleats but you change your oil once a year? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I never go the programmed miles that tells me when to change. I've just always changed it have way through and then again when the computer tells me. And if I were only burning low miles a year i believe I would be changing every six months, but not one year. I believe BMW will also change your oil prior to the mileage if time comes first.

Car_Almond

I am a car nut who does not believe in frequent oil changes. Too many oil changes are bad for the environment of course, but there are many good reasons not to change it any more often than when the car tells you to.
Frequent oil changes are a waste. My 2007 530xi, like other late-model BMWs, has an oil condition sensor (OCS) that measures the dielectric permittivity of a small column of oil in the sump, and that does correlate well to acid buildup, viscosity increase (age/oxidation does that), and antifreeze/water contamination according to patents and tech papers I've seen on it. ... In other words, it does pretty well in sensing when an oil is worn out. Its an interesting google-read if you're an engineer or techie like me. Another reason frequent oil changes are a bad idea is that SAE (peer reviewed) research studies on engine wear has shown that new motor oil actually has a higher wear rate when clean/new, and that wear rate does drop as small carbon particles build up slightly. Yet another reason NOT to change the oil too often: We have a 7-quart sump, a lot.

Getting back to the subject of oil filters, it seems we can benefit from good filtration at low pressure drops across the filter.

tonyb635

Well I do use the full synthetic oil Mobil 1 but I don't wait for the car to tell me. I have my message setup in the idrive to notify me around half point which works out to be around 6-7 k, then I change it again when the idrive says to. I know that this oil is supposed to last longer and then the large qty. makes up for the longer distance. But for some reason I just have a hard time letting the car go 12-14K on one change. Yes, I am an engineer for a very interesting automotive company, but not so much on the techie side though...

Car_Almond

With a large sump, our BMWs should outperform even the taxi test they did:

Car_Almond

Also, another synthetic in a recent taxi test ( 10,000 mile oil changes over 100,000 miles here )

Car_Almond

And the above tests are with Mobil 1 ( 15,000 mile oil changes) and Kendall GT-1 ( 10,000 mile oil changes) in vehicles that were not really designed for long oil change intervals.

Our BMWs have bigger sumps, and oil thats as good or better than the oils used in those tests.

Getting back to oil filter discussions, maybe the best strategy is to run a low-flow-resistance oil filter like a K&N in the winter (thicker oil at startup, longer warm-ups), then change to a NAPA glass-enhanced media in the summer. Change oil once in the Fall only each year, or when our OCS oil condition sensor tells us the viscosity changed, water/ethyleneGlycol is in there, or there is acid buildup, all which shows up as changes in the dielectric permittivity of the oil the sensor sees.

pcy

Car_almond, are you a salesman for some [car related products] company?