If you buy your oil and a filter on sale or at Walmart it’s cheap. I buy a few of quality filters (Bosch, Baldwin, motorcraft, purolator, etc.) whenever I can find a good rebate on them or I can buy some that ship from the same place as an already existing order on rockauto, then buy my oil at Walmart or whenever there is a good online rebate for something like Mobil 1. Most of the premium filters like the ones I listed above are rated for 10,000 miles, but it’ll tell you on the box the mileage rating. If you want to do a 10k oil change then get a little higher end filter, you can order a box online like I said and it’ll usually come out to $2.50 to $3 a filter. That being said, not all 10k miles are created equal, city miles and towing will break down oil a lot faster than all highway miles. I personally run a synthetic blend and change every 4k and use a good filter, 7 quarts oil and filter comes out to about $30. I personally don’t like to stretch my oil change intervals, when I used synthetic in the past I would only go about 7k miles just because my vehicle gets used for towing a lot.

Recently spoke with a mechanic. He as on the other side of the fence with the filters. His argument was that the higher quality filter material was more dense. While that is a good thing, it also meant that at some point, your engine would be starving for oil because the flow through the filter was restricted so much do the higher amount of filtration. He was in favor of the cheaper filters changed at the 5k mark on a 10k oil change interval.

Just bringing up another point of view.

Recently spoke with a mechanic. He as on the other side of the fence with the filters. His argument was that the higher quality filter material was more dense. While that is a good thing, it also meant that at some point, your engine would be starving for oil because the flow through the filter was restricted so much do the higher amount of filtration. He was in favor of the cheaper filters changed at the 5k mark on a 10k oil change interval.

Just bringing up another point of view.

Find a new mechanic, that one is dumber then the dirty oil filters he replaces. Oil filters have a bypass valve in them designed to prevent oil starvation.

So if the filter material is restricting the flow to the point that the bypass valve is open, is the filter still filtering the oil?

I've looked at this like the air filters I use in my home A/C. I've looked at some of the "high end" filters with the thicker paper. I'm sure at 1st it was some great filtration. But as dirt collected on the filter material, the flow of air has to be restricted.

Since I've started this conversation I think almost every oil and filter I've looked at says something to the tune of "good for 20k miles".
But yet the computer in the vehicle will tell you time for an oil change anywhere around 3200 - 3500 miles.

There's a big difference in 3k miles and 20k miles.
Do you really think the oil and filters go as much as 20k miles these days?

Find a new mechanic, that one is dumber then the dirty oil filters he replaces. Oil filters have a bypass valve in them designed to prevent oil starvation.

I change at 10k on my two diesels. Dodge Cummins and VW sportswagen.
My Toyota get one free at 10k at the dealer for 2 years or 25k miles. When that stops in a couple months I will research it a little more.


I owned a 2016 F150 2.7 that had one of the tiniest cartridge oil filter I have ever seen. Its smaller than my VW filter.
If I had kept it I would change that out every 7k miles.

The best filters have synthetic material in them. They filter more because they hold more. I know Amsoil, Fleetmaster and Mobil 1 advertise that their filters hold twice the dirt that conventional paper filters hold.