I tend to go a bit overboard on servicing things, especially as the vehicles I own tend to have higher mileage and / or are reasonably high performance. One thing I have learned over the last fifteen years or so is that replacing filters with cheap-ass generic parts usually ends up in tears one way or another.

Some of my personal evidence for this conclusion is circumstantial, some of it is very material. There’s also a lot of third party comment that reinforces this standpoint too. Either way, I figure it’s just not worth saving the tenner on a filter over a “proper” one when a filter letting go can be so destructive.

I’ve seen an air filter shred itself, only to be dragged rather unceremoniously into a turbo, shattering the turbine (Discovery 200 TDi)

I’ve seen a fuel filter let go only to block every injector in the engine, never mind the damage it caused to the fuel pump (Nissan Patrol)

I’ve also seen an oil filter that, out of the box, was missing most of the filter internals…

As far as third party info goes, here’s an ace video by Bill from Powerstroke Help:

As such, there’s a (very) short list of filters I trust:

  • Toyota OEM (Nippon-Denso)
  • Mahle

There’s also a list of manufacturers I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole:

  • Boshi
  • Blueprint
  • Wix

Obviously these are just based on personal experience, but if you take a Denso filter and feel its weight in comparison to a Boshi one, you can literally feel where the money goes!

Someone asked me about Fram filters a while back: to be honest I do keep a couple simply because they’re good emergency stop gaps. I’ve never had a Fram filter do anything nasty, but equally they’re not on my “trusted” list…

Ultimately, buy the proper things. 140,000 miles on my GT-Four using Mahle filters and over a quarter of a million on my 80-series with Denso filters say so :-)

Proper fuel filter

Proper oil filter

Update: Unbelievably, this morning my folks said their Berlingo was busy dumping oil all over the driveway and could I help. This is what I found:

This was a Halfords filter. It had cracked towards the top of the can and was seeping oil when under pressure. Unbelievable!