Oil Filters – Asset or Consumable?

Oil Filters – Asset or Consumable?

Think a minute before you answer. Most would initially say “consumable,” right? An element does have a life expectancy, and once the usefulness or capacity to hold contaminants is used up, then it is replaced with a new element. So yes, in this context it's considered consumable...without taking into consideration its designed purpose, protecting the engine.

​Has it done the best a filter can do? Maybe since you think it's consumable or just a throw-away, then you ​​may have taken the cheap way out and purchased a low cost alternative to the OEM element. Maybe you were thinking, "I'm just going to throw it away in a couple hundred hours or few thousand miles anyway."

What's an asset? An asset is any item of economic value owned by an individual, a useful or valuable thing.

Now let's look at the same element as an asset. The engine comes with an element on it from the factory. An element that meets all of the design criteria required by the engine manufacturer to protect the engine from premature component failure.​

​The engine produces power, (work) by a process called internal combustion. The engine is a contaminant manufacturing factory. As long as it's running, it's producing wear particles that need to be filtered out, and combustion soot. The combustion process alone produces chemical products that break down the lube oil additives and eventually reduce the oil to a dirty contaminated sludge unable to protect the engine.

Purchase an element that meets all of the design criteria required to protect the engine and components from premature failure, and it becomes an asset to the company, just like a good employee.​​

In a recent bench marking study done by the Racor Engineering Media Team, nineteen brands of oil filter elements currently available for a popular light duty truck with a diesel V8 engine were tested. Tests included bubble point, filtration efficiency, filtration capacity, and collapse strength. The test results for these nineteen elements were then compared to a Racor oil filter element designed and manufactured to meet all the OEM specifications:

"Taking the group as a whole showed that the ability of other vendors to produce an element which met the engine OEM specifications was below 16%."

Pay me now or pay me later...an asset or just a consumable, you decide.

Speaking of assets, add a Racor Absolute Bypass Oil Cleaner to your engine lube system and reduce contaminants by 95% and put the savings on the bottom line!