Are there different grades of Wix oil filters?

Reason why I am asking is I paid $8 for a black wix 51515 while the white carquest filters which are supposedly made by wix are only about $4. The carquest box that the filter came had fine print which said affina filtration. Perhaps the price difference reflects quality????

You would have to take a hack saw and cut the two filters apart to find out.

But, most likely there is a difference in the amount of "filter material" in the two filters -- whoever made them.

A couple people hacksawed corvair oil filters (6 - 8) apart many years ago and there was a big difference in the construction.

On air filters, you can easily see the difference -- if you put a wix air filter next to a fram air filter.

Affinia is the parent company of wix. Yes they make many grades of filters including most of carquest's and napa's private label filters. They do make multiple grades of filters, particularly in the private labels. Cq's "red" napa's "pro-select" wix "pro-tec" are the basic filter while the "blue" "gold" and standard wix are the premium units that have better quality materials, and more filter media. Napa's nascar select fits in the middle, at least price wise.

Personally I use motorcraft, the best bang for the buck. The important filtration features of the purolator pureone w/o the expensive "bed liner" exterior or teflon coated gasket.

As eric states, there are a number of different grades of filters

fwiw here is a picture of two air filters -- bottom is a stp air filter (made by ???) and top is a wix filter.

You can see the different number of "pleats" -- same applies to oil filters...

Got it . El cheapo carquest white filter no go. Black expensive wix 51515 yes.

The Chevy website I use turned me on to this link with all the info you could ever want to know about oil filters:

oil filters revealed - minimopar resources

I work at napa. I live in wv, napa filters are made by wix filtration corp. The napa gold (black) filter is around $6 for a 1515 filter. Which is the napa number for a wix 51515. The gold filter filters down to 19 microns, with a glass enhance media. And also we sell a pro select filter (white) with part number 21515 and it sells around $3 it also features a rubber anti drain back valve where as the golds is a silicon valve. Hope this helps a little more with everything else.

Will the napa gold 1515 fit the oil filter conversion setup? I have a s80 and it originally had the canister style with the filter insert, the po converted it to the screw on style filter.

Yes, that same adapter is what's used on the sv engines.

Baldwin b7231 is the filter I use on all of my IH eqiupment except my 75 as it's a different animal with the front suspension and so I just run the baldwin b2 which is the stock application. I swear by baldwin. Very reasonable pricing, not as easy to get as say a napa filter but I just buy a case or whatever the distributor has in stock when I go down there.

baldwin b7231


Edit: having trouble linking the actual filter page but search b7231

I must be a little crazy, I use k&n on everything I own, my k5, my Scout, my hd, everything I own has a k&n oil filter and k&n air filter!

rusty Scout said:

got it . El cheapo carquest white filter no go. Black expensive wix 51515 yes.

Click to expand...

.
- re wix:
no, the 51515 filter is only made for three IH engines, the l4 3.2l 196 cid engine, the mv404 (6.6l) engine and the 404 gas engine .

the correct spin-on wix filter for most IH gas engines is 51452 .
this is for most every pickup, Travelall, and Scout with any gas engine from the l4 3.2l 196 cid engine through the v8 6.4l 392 cid engine . although I don't see any performance specification difference between the two on their web site catalog (other than burst pressure), there are a lot of other oil filter specs not mentioned, and there must be a reason why wix does not recommend them both equally for all these engines . I looked at both recently at an auto parts store, and the 51452 definitely felt heavier .
http://www.wixfilters.com/lookup/pa...rfriendly.asp?url=partentry.asp&partnumber=b2
B7231:
http://catalog.baldwinfilter.com/pa...iendly.asp?url=partentry.asp&partnumber=b7231

.
- re k&n:
as for the k & n oil filters, the ps-3001 and hp-3001 have the 8 to 11 psi by-pass, but no mention of actual micron filtering size . all they say is 99% contaminates removed, but not 99% of what size . they also have an interesting reusable oil filter I never saw before:
http://www.knfilters.com/search/pro...hed specs on the b7231 ? thank you . steve

This is interesting steve. I'd never visited the wix website to browse through their application charts before today. On the occasion of the first lof I did on my Scout many years ago, I went with a purolator filter because that's what I knew and used on my daily drivers. In the purolator application guide, l30001 is the recommended filter for the IH i4 and sv8 offerings. This part number crosses to a plethora of Ford and chrysler engines from the 60's through the 80's and beyond. So when I switched to the wix brand, I applied the same crossing logic in making my filter selection of 51515, as it is often easier to find parts for the big 3 than our obsolete orphans. I've never had any issues with this filter on my sv8 engines. According to the spec sheets below, the burst pressure is the only difference between the two. With the low operating pressures these lubrication systems generate, I find it odd that a canister with such a high burst rate would be a necessity. Also odd is that for the '73-'74 scouts with 196 engine, the 51515 filter is spec'd, but not for the 152 and 196 engines for any other years. There's nothing different about the lubrication systems in those engines from one year to the next, the next, the next...so on and so forth. Good enough for one or two years, good enough for all. This part of the engine wasn't subject to radical evolution and change over the production years. Anyway, the specs for both wix filters are below for comparison/contrast.

51452 specs:
part details

51515 specs:
part details

scoutboy74 said:

this is interesting steve. I'd never visited the wix website to browse through their application charts before today. On the occasion of the first lof I did on my Scout many years ago, I went with a purolator filter because that's what I knew and used on my daily drivers. In the purolator application guide, l30001 is the recommended filter for the IH i4 and sv8 offerings. This part number crosses to a plethora of Ford and chrysler engines from the 60's through the 80's and beyond. So when I switched to the wix brand, I applied the same crossing logic in making my filter selection of 51515, as it is often easier to find parts for the big 3 than our obsolete orphans. I've never had any issues with this filter on my sv8 engines. According to the spec sheets below, the burst pressure is the only difference between the two. With the low operating pressures these lubrication systems generate, I find it odd that a canister with such a high burst rate would be a necessity. Also odd is that for the '73-'74 scouts with 196 engine, the 51515 filter is spec'd, but not for the 152 and 196 engines for any other years. There's nothing different about the lubrication systems in those engines from one year to the next, the next, the next...so on and so forth. Good enough for one or two years, good enough for all. This part of the engine wasn't subject to radical evolution and change over the production years. Anyway, the specs for both wix filters are below for comparison/contrast.

51452 specs:
part details

51515 specs:
part details

Click to expand...

Hi,
I don't know IH engines too well, so I did not know for sure. I suspect because wix is such a big corporation, and there are so many different applications for both filters, that one part of the company did not know what the other part of the company was doing. So two different but basically interchangeable filters were developed, but each with their own applications. I held carquest and the two other filters in my hands at the same time. The 51452 felt slightly heavier than the other two, but might only be a heavier can, as if our engines might accidentally put out 300 psi. ;-)

I'm still researching the b7231.

And to further the discussion, partsmaster is a knock-off made by wix. The numbering system is very similar. 61515 is a direct cross to 51515. Interestingly enough there is no partsmaster 61452 filter. The hastings filter for the i4 and sv8 engines is hf 115 in case you care to research that option.

Thanks.

I'm still researching the b7231 filter. Apparently this is a 15 micron soak-back oil filter used in the railroad industry. That's why its not found in our automotive applications. A soak-back filter is used by an electric oil pump to pump oil into large industrial diesel engines after the engine is shut off. It is used to keep the components, especially the turbo bearings, from over-heating and melting after the engine is shut off.

At 15 microns it filters better than the 21 micron wix filters or 30 micron loadstar filters. Now if only I can determine if it has a bypass valve and the psi rating of that valve. Hopefully its in the 8 to 10 psi range. If so, then that's the filter I will be using. At 15 micron filtering, no wonder ihpartschad likes this filter so well. I will too...

Steve

I know that there are a lot of web sites out there with cut away views of filters, and that discuses the deference's between cardboard inserts and metal, so I wont go into it here, but a sure way to tell that there is a difference is to just pick them up. The weight difference between a good quality filter and cheap one is huge.

For me its motorcraft all the way, or hastings. They make filters for some of the big three.

When I worked at the Ford dealer, we would have costumers complain about lifter rattle on cold start up on the 4.0 and 5.0l engines. We would tell them it was because they were not using a motorcraft filter with a check valve to prevent lifter leak down. To this we would usually get a bs! " your just trying to charge me more for a filter". We would offer to change their oil, and if the lifter rattle didn't go away, the oil change was on us, and we would pay for any oil filter of their choice. We never had to do a refund.

I use the fl1a on my 80. I have had 5 rangers over the years, all of them with multiple 100,000 miles on the clock with motorcraft oil and filters. If its good enough for that, its good enough for the Scout.

Now about oils...

The use of the napa 1452 vs the 1515 May go back to the original Ford filters. On the original design (years ago) Ford spin on filters the gasket did not extend above (below?) the base of the filter at the outside. When used on the IH and other applications the base of the filter would contact before the gasket was compressed completely. On the Ford application the filter base was designed so this wasn't a problem. Later on the spec was changed and all Ford style filters now that I know of the gasket extends past the filter base so this isn't a problem.

Hi,

I've had several extensive conversations with wix technical support. I wanted to get to the bottom of which filter is best, and if there really is any difference between the 51515 and the 51452.

As explained to me, with wix, everything is application-driven. The 51452 has a high burst pressure rating only because this filter is also used for transmissions. And that is the only difference shown in the books (or on the web site), for these two filters, but that is only part of the story.

To summarize, the 51515 is really a car filter. It is the filter to use if your IH never sees any bumps larger than the speed bumps by the schools in your residential neighborhoods.

However, as explained to me, if you drive your truck frequently off-road, along bone-jarring wash-board dirt roads, the 51452 is the filter you should use. Both filters use the same media to filter your oil, with the same rated by-pass, anti-drainback, and filtering capacities, but the 51452 is the ruggedly-built filter, constructed to withstand prolonged and excessive vibration, and from a construction viewpoint, it is much more than a 51515 with a stronger can.

Remember, wix filter selections are application driven. And if you do a check for the applications wix lists for both filters, you will see the 51515, with some exceptions, is mostly manufactured for cars and light trucks, while the 51452 is manufactured mostly for tractors, and off-road construction equipment, many with diesel engines and no suspension. Other than a couple land rovers, I did not see any "car" applications at all in the 51452 application list, although the list is long and there might be some there. As an IH owner it should make you proud that IH is the only light trucks rugged enough to be listed in the same category as the off-road tractors, excavators, etc.

So to answer the question "are there different grades of wix oil filters" the answer is definitely a yes, although that difference might not be apparent with a preliminary product specification search.

In addition, if that does not make you want to consider which wix filter is proper to use, remember that by using the filter they recommend for our IH trucks, if that filter should ever fail in a way that damages your engine, wix will repair or replace that engine on their dime.

As far as filter interchanges, don't trust the web sites or the books. The baldwin b2 interchanges with the wix 51515, but that is as far as I will presently trust it. If you're using another brand other than wix or baldwin, look in their application pages, not their part number interchange tables. Baldwin, as a manufacturer heavy into industrial applications, has a potential to offer filters better than the wix 51452, but every time I follow-up on a table part number cross-reference, the specifications for the two filters are not the same, and sometimes are not even close.
I'll add another post here as soon as I receive the technical info I've requested from baldwin and have a chance to study it.

Other than wix and baldwin, are there any other major auto/truck filter manufacturers I should research? (hastings and purolator are part of baldwin)

steve

Good to know. Thank you steve, for all the time and effort you've put into researching this topic.