Since I had an LS, I just bought the small filter for that as required (the older bigger filter will not fit in the LS), and also for the 91S and the Milano, both of which normally called for the bigger one. Made life easier changing the filters.

I buy the Mobil 1 version, M1-102A. There are other brands one can use as well. I also use the Mobil 1 15-50 high zinc and phosphorus level oil, recommended by Mobil for flat tappet valve design such as we have in our engines. There are other brands of suitable oils as well.

 

Have you ever tried coming from the underside to change the oil filter on a spider. It works perfect.


Ken

 

I carry Clean filters made in Italy. Stay away from the Mobil 1 filters, they are junk.

Oil Filter V6 (small)

Oil filter - All V6- Made in Italy by Clean Filter

alfissimo.com

 

Why do you say they are junk?

 

Overhyped. Cut one open, very sloppily made. That's why they are junk to me. Name on the filter does not coincide with the companies quality oil IMO. They make the filter heavier to fool customers into thinking it is better made. It's not. It will do the job if you need a mobil 1 but I would recommend only 3K mile oil changes.

 

There is a U Tube video out where a guy cuts open all the name brand oil filters. You can make up your own mind after seeing the video. WIX is my go to oil filter.


Ken

 

"Stay away from the Mobil 1 filters, they are junk"

"WIX is my go to oil filter"

I can try those. No big deal. I do suspect all filters work to an adequate level, regardless of quality of build. At 198k miles now, the engine in my 91S doesn't seem to have suffered.

 

Most likely they will all do the job. Just no need for fancy mobil 1 or K&N or whatever. One of the main brands makes Mobil 1. Most likely Fram.

 

Check out the video

Ken

 

There's only like 4-5 major filter manufacturers for the stuff you see in stores: Mann+Hummel (Purolator), Dana (Wix, Napa), Federal-Mogul (Champion), and Trico (Fram). I could be wrong about some of these as they keep changing: Fram until recently was Allied Signal and Honeywell.

Most of the other brands are just rebrands by one of the above manufacturers. Mobil1 are (were?) made by Federal-Mogul and from what I've seen they are (were?) good enough.

I avoid Fram like the plague (cardboard end caps, leaky anti-drainback valves, less & cheaper filter media) but any of the others should probably do the job fine.

 

I use a QS3600 on my Spider. Nothing else fits from the bottom with the engine protector on ( I've tried).
I change my oil every 1000 miles with 10w40 non synthetic and a fresh filter.
As long as you change your oil in regular intervals I don't think it really makes a diff what filter you use.
That You Tube video is incredibly non scientific to say the least, just my opinion....

 

Honestly I’d just remove the air filter box. Makes the job much easier and you can use the larger filter.

It’s a few clips and three bolts.

 

Not sure how just replacing a filter with clear access while I’m draining the oil is harder than pulling the air box? No screws or clips...What?

 

"I change my oil every 1000 miles"

IMHO, way overkill. Tests don't seem to support that frequency.

The small filter makes it easy to change in our Milano. Loosen it from below, and then reach down past everything to extract it and install a new one. The small one doesn't help a lot in removing one from the 91S except easier pulling it through the brake lines, etc, out the right hand side; and of course, the big filter cannot be used in the LS.

 

"I change my oil every 1000 miles"

IMHO, way overkill. Tests don't seem to support that frequency. Your money though.

The small filter makes it easy to change in our Milano. Loosen it from below, and then reach down past everything to extract it and install a new one. The small one doesn't help a lot in removing one from the 91S except easier pulling it through the brake lines, etc, out the right hand side; and of course, the big filter cannot be used in the LS.

Yes it is! But....10w40 oil $20, filter $7 and I love working on my car!

 

I use a WIX. It's a FRAM PH43 P/N. Don't use a FRAM. Every 5000 miles. 20/50 Valvoline , some 15/50 Mobil 1.

 

I opt for a Ryco Z418ST, which are readily available in Australia and a reasonable price. They are quite small and easy to change. Not sure if you folks in North America can find them easily though!

 

Surely the only relevant test for an oil filter is performance based. Cutting a filter apart can't tell you anything useful.

The two things that matter would be filtration efficiency and capacity of the filtration medium to hold the trapped particles without materially reducing oil flow.

Engine oil pumps have significantly more pumping capacity than the engine requires, both pressure and volume. Filter resistance has to be irrelevant for practical purposes.

No video I've seen purports to measure either characteristic of oil filters yet those are the only things that could possibly matter.

I 've never had any oil filter fail to filter. Ever.

 

Surely the only relevant test for an oil filter is performance based. Cutting a filter apart can't tell you anything useful.

Well, it can tell you that Fram filters have a poorly-molded anti drainback valve that seals against cardboard. Which is why they leak oil back into the sump and can cause low oil pressure on startup.

Do a search, not at all uncommon on all sorts of cars. Happened to Superloaf here on the BB:

Oil Pressure Question about pressure on start up

so i just noticed that the oil pressure on my milano is very slow to come up on start up. it takes nearly 3-4 seconds before the gauge moves and while i know it does take time to build pressure, this seems excessive to me. is this normal? even when warm it takes some time but of course the...

www.alfabb.com

 

99% of the information on the internet about oil and filters is BS. And the other 1% is misunderstood. Just sayin’

 

Eh, I just find it easier to get the filter off, out, and back on neatly from the top, personally. Easier for me not to tip the filter as I remove it and spill hot oil down my arm. Others may be more coordinated than me.

Like I said, the real reason I like doing it that way is to enable the larger filter. I have no data that it's better, just my preference.

 

Hi Gube, can I ask which car/engine are you talking about? On the 164 V6 the oil filter is buried on the right of the car, below and right of the rear exhaust manifold - while the airbox is at the top left of the engine bay. I always access it through the right of the car, reaching in above the right side of the steering rack.

 

S3/S4 Spider or Milano V6 is where removing the Bosch airbox can help. I've never owned a 164, sorry.

 

The anti drain back valve seals against the inlet holes in the steel mounting plate, obviously. "Drain back" is the key concept. Oil is pumped into the filter from the outside ring of holes in the mounting plate, is pushed through the filter medium from the outside canister side into the center feed and filtered oil enters the engine from there. So there's no possibility of a seal failure against any cardboard. It seals against steel. There is no pressure on that valve beyond the weight of oil inside the filter. It doesn't have to seal very tightly to work. It should be fairly flimsy so as to offer very low resistance to oil being pumped in.

The center hole is made from a mesh or perforated steel sleeve designed to keep the filter medium from detaching and entering the engine.

The filter has an internal bypass valve preventing it from blocking oil flow should it clog up due to any frankly incredible failure on the part of the owner to change it.

These are very simple components. The single most important part is the filter medium. It can't be too porous or it won't filter, it can't be too effective or it will rapidly clog up (it's not intended as a purifier as a water filter is) and service life depends on it's size which isn't necessarily proportional to canisters size.

 

...

I'm guessing you didn't click the link. The drainback valve leak happened to Superloaf on his Alfa with a Fram Extra Guard. It's a known issue with the cheaper Fram filters.

Fram's low-end filters are literally the only filters on the market that use glued cardboard end caps. From the teardowns you can see they also use less filter media, a cheaper cellulose media, nitrile rather than silicone drainback valves, and a thinner/cheaper o-ring. They are designed to be as cheap as possible, and if you've got an engineering background you can make judgments about quality and design choices by taking them apart.

I'm not recommending some magic filter brand, I just recommend not buying the cheap Fram stuff with the cardboard. Literally any other filter manufacturer would be a better choice. If other filters cost a lot more it might be worth debating, but they don't.

If you're emotionally invested in Fram their higher end stuff appears to be better made, but personally I avoid the brand on principle because it annoys me that they sell the cheap stuff.

 

I have change the oil filter both ways, from under the car and removing the air box. The advantage of removing the air box is you can do a good job wiping the area down from all the blow by oil.


Ken

 

"wiping the area down from all the blow by oil"

Just as a thought, I don't think there should be any blow by oil deposits if the oil vapor recovery system is hooked up, as provided in the more modern Alfa engines (my Sprint GT of course just dumped the vapors overboard). There could easily be oil on the surfaces of the engine from leaks, but that's a different subject, and something we are all familiar with on these engines.

The other thing to remember with oil filters is that they are primarily designed to collect larger potentially damaging particles, not the very small combustion "soot" particles that the oil detergents keep in suspension (which turns the oil black after several thousand miles of use). Those very small particles basically cause no damage in the engine.

Used to use Fram filters decades ago in the Sprint GT and 75 Alfetta sedan, but not since. The Sprint GT engine ended up with 260k miles on it with no apparent damage, ie, no meaningful loss of oil pressure or compression level. Maybe Fram was better then.

 

Used to use Fram filters decades ago in the Sprint GT and 75 Alfetta sedan, but not since. The Sprint GT engine ended up with 260k miles on it with no apparent damage, ie, no meaningful loss of oil pressure or compression level. Maybe Fram was better then.

Fram used to be fine, they were OEM on some Ferraris and Alfas, I think. They only changed their construction to the cheaper method ~30 years ago, I think under Honeywell or Allied Signal ownership.

They've been a brand of like 3-4 corporate overlords over the past few decades. In 2019 Fram was sold to Trico, the windshield wiper guys.

 

Yup. I remember my friend with the 62 Ferrari GT 2+2 and the V12 engine. Had two bright orange Fram filters sticking up upside down on the front of the engine. Looked cool.

Lol, maybe windshield wiper makers don't know how to make filters.

 

If anyone is interested I posted 7 of these factory oil filters in the for sale section of the classifieds.

 

Guess I’ll throw my 2 cents in as well. Personally I change my oil every 5k miles on the dot using the appropriate weight shell rotella t6 full synthetic (yes it’s a heavy truck oil). The shell stuff has incredibly high zinc numbers (at least in the t6) and an additive package meant to go 10k plus in heavy duty diesels so it does an excellent job keeping the engine clean and the oil that comes out seems to suffer very little viscosity degradation like what I was seeing with valvoline and liquimoly.

As for filters I use filters made by wix or Mann Hummel. Napa proselect is Mann, their more expensive filters are wix. Duralast filters are made by wix. The new napa platinum filters are my current favorite since they pack an incredible amount of pleats into those filters (more filter media). Supposedly the new fram filters are safe to use but I still avoid them like the plague. I’ve had 4 engine catastrophically fail due to collapsed fram filters so I will never buy one again


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I've read that ultra high zinc levels can cause problems? Max recommended for our flat tap;pet engines was somewhere around 1200-1400 ppm?

To quote: Tests have shown that the amount of wear on a cam decreases as the amount of ZDDP is increased, up to around 1,400 parts per million (PPM) zinc. Above that level, the wear will actually increase due to zinc pitting.

And: https://aaoil.co.uk/123579-2/

I assume the green range spans from ~1200 to ~1400 ppm.

 

If I remember correctly t6 is somewhere between 1000-1200 ppm. It definitely doesn’t have excessive levels otherwise it would damage the engines it’s designed for. Guess I should have clarified my incredibly high statement, that was in relation to other full synthetics designed for modern engines


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