Honest questions.
I know everyone says the FL1995A sucks compared to the FL1995, but i dont know why? The only thing i can find is a change to the gasket.
Also: That Fleetguard is 30 microns whereas the Motorcraft is supposed to be 18 or 20, so what makes the Fleetguard better?
Great question. I went to a class years ago, like mid to late 90s, when this series filter came out. The venturi style, or vortex or whatever they call it with stratapore.
Seeing the testing results, videos, slide shows It was impressive. At that time the only way you could get bypass filtration was an add on filter. Anyone remember the old lubrifiner filters that were like 2 gallons of oil mounted on a crossmember that were the messiest things in the world to change?
Well I do.
These filters stop sludge. They work as well as a separate add on bypass filter. Cummins ran 3 engines, one standard filters, one with standard filters and an add on bypass and this filter here.
They ran the engines with an electric motor, so no risk of fuel contamination, or failed injectors or anything like that. About as fair and equal as you could run a test.
They all had the same oil and oil change intervals. Cummins pulled the valve covers and oil pans every 500 hours for inspection. In time lapse you could see the sludge forming. Really cool thing to watch.
Of course standard filters failed first. Oil supply related issues, I honestly don't remember which of the other two engines failed second but when you open them up they both looked like brand new inside. They did not die from oil supply related failures.
To me that showed we can get bypass filtration without adding on bypass filter, without the addition cost and mess.
Secondly, have you ever seen a hole blown in the filter media from thick oil and high pressure on a cold start? Not nearly as much of an issue today with all the synthetics but it used to be a very serious issue. If you were watching the gauge you could see it happen, big drop in oil pressure, like from 80 psi to 50 instantly, we tried to save engines after that, but it was not easy, pulling pans, changing oil pumps, trying to flush the systems. Mediocre results.
Now onto the micron rating. Yeah I would agree that 18 microns would filter better than 30. But with that 30 you get a bypass filter. Also Big trucks use 30 micron, why does a pickup need less? Smaller microns?
Fleetguard is a filter company, it is all they do. They don't outsource filters. They make their own, now most of them in juarez Mexico. They are owned by cummins and come on cummins engines.
That gives me a pretty good feeling that they know what they are doing.
Everyone's experience is different. Wix really used to be top dog. But after all the years of quality issues at work and in personal life I can say I have never had a bad fleetguard filter. No missing gaskets, no metal shavings inside a brand new filter, no rust inside a brand new filter. No bad check balls inside brand new filters. Probably plenty of other reasons I don't even remember.
TMC a fair sized trucking company is located in Des Moines. They were having problems with lubrifiner brand filters on cummins engines. They had oil filters falling off while driving down the road. It got so bad that the shop was sending guys out to tighten every filter on every truck every week. Of course filter guys say it is a cummins problem and cummins was saying it was a filter problem. But TMC is big, they carry some weight.
Cummins guy finally says hey, try fleetguard, since we own fleetgaurd, if a filter falls off it is still our problem.
So TMC did, they swapped to fleetguard. No more filters fell off, came loose. No more problems. On top of that, they greatly reduced the number of oil leaks they had. (which were caused by filters cut wrong apparently)
If you take your 444E to an international dealer for service they are putting on a 30 micron filter.
Now my kids tell me I am crazy and they only buy motorcraft oil and filters. So even though Ford didn't make the engine, they think Ford knows best what filter should be on it.
Yeah I rambled there. Anyway in my mind that fleetguard is the best filter for the old 7.3 unless you want to add a separate bypass filter.
If you add a separate bypass filter then it really doesn't mater what you throw on there.
