What Is The Best Oil Filter For My Truck

Your engine'due south oil filter has a critically important job. The soup-tin-size filter at the bottom of your engine needs to remove contaminants and particles from your difficult-working engine's oil so they don't cause internal damage and costly repairs.

That'southward why yous should exist sure to supersede your oil filter every time yous modify your vehicle's oil. If you're a DIY sort of person who changes the oil yourself, information technology pays to spin a pinnacle-quality oil filter into place while you lot're doing the task. Almost every car manufacturer recommends you lot do exactly that. They know all-time how to protect the engines in their vehicles because they want to go along expensive warranty repairs to a minimum.

How do you lot discover the all-time oil filter for your vehicle? And how much should you spend on it? The answers aren't as complicated equally y'all recollect. Here's how to find the best oil filter for your ride—at a slap-up price.

Engine Oil Wears Out

Engine oil has an incredibly tough consignment. To properly protect your highly complex, expensive-to-repair engine, oil is pumped through a multitude of tight passages that lubricate dozens of fast-moving metallic parts. It must flow throughout the engine most instantaneously upon startup. And information technology needs to maintain flawless performance through temperatures ranging from subfreezing to hundreds of degrees, over a period of many months and thousands of miles.

While doing that chore day after twenty-four hours, the oil inevitably accumulates microscopic particles of abrasive soot, dirt, metal shavings, and other contaminants that slowly reduce its lubricating quality and effectiveness. Old, filthy oil tin really harm your engine's bearings and other internal surfaces, causing the engine to neglect. So your engine absolutely needs a pinnacle-quality, highly constructive oil filter.

Getty Images

Oil-Filter Prices

The practiced news is that a quality oil filter does not need to be expensive. You can observe excellent quality, make-name oil filters in the $7–$15 price range from such well-known brands equally Mobile1, Bosch, Fram, Motorcraft, and more.

We did a quick check on Amazon for oil filters for i of our staffer's cars, a 1999 Mazda MX-5 Miata, and institute filters from such trusted names as Fram, Purolator, Grand&N, Wix, and Mazda ranging from nigh $5 to $fifteen. We'd put whatsoever one of those brands on a personal car.

K&N offers a helpful feature on what information technology calls its Performance Wrench-Off filters: a large nut on the filter'southward outboard stop that lets y'all to tighten or remove it with a standard wrench or socket. Almost other filters, which lack this characteristic, volition require you lot to utilize a low-cost filter wrench to loosen them if they're on too tight to remove by hand. (The wrench is the circular tool on the left side of the photo that leads this story.)

Oil-Filter Replacement

Nearly oil filters are piece of cake to change, so there's no reason for yous to shy away from doing the task yourself. You volition have to exist able to get underneath your vehicle'south engine—either with the vehicle on a lift or on alpine-enough jack stands that allow you lot to safely meet, reach, remove, and supervene upon the filter without a struggle. (Some filters are accessible from the height of the engine compartment.) Here's a Car and Driver video showing the steps to changing your oil and filter.

Getty Images

Oil filters are generally easy to locate on the engine and easy to remove, simply by unscrewing them counterclockwise. And please, be kind to the surroundings; have a basin to catch the oil y'all're draining during an oil and filter change. If you can't handle doing the chore properly or don't take the right location or tools bachelor, and then you should pay a professional store.

The all-time oil filters are designed to retain 99 percent effectiveness for at to the lowest degree as long equally your oil does (check your owner's manual for recommended change intervals). Some filter brands tout filtration adequacy for 7500 or fifty-fifty 15,000 miles, but we recommend replacing the filter every time you change the oil. Why run clean oil through a dirty filter?