Oil filter reviews: anyone using scientific oil analysis?

I’ve read a few online oil filter reviews, and I find them seriously lacking. They all seem to consist of reviewers cutting open dry, clean, unused filters, and then judging them on what they think/feel is good design criteria. For example, everyone rags on Fram for their paper end caps, claiming that this paper will fall apart when it gets soaked with motor oil, and that this can destroy your engine…

Fram may not be the top of the line in quality, but they pump out millions of these paper end cap filters, every year, year after year. With the quantity of product they sell, there should be millions of engines destroyed, and class action lawsuits should be clogging up our courts for the next century. Yet, this is not the case!

Paper may fall apart when soaked with water, but oil is radically different than water, and common sense dictates that if these end caps were a hazard to engines, Fram would have been sued into non-existence years ago (Yamaha, by the way, also uses paper end caps, apparently, and one reviewer stated they were no better than Fram…).

Some of the reviewers have used oil analysis regarding filters, but they only mention it in passing, concentrating over 99% of their review on their opinion of how they think the filters in question should be designed. This is purely their opinion, based on their self-education — there is no science involved, no real analysis of the function of the filters with oil.

To prove that the glued paper end caps dissolve/fall apart in oil, should be as easy as cutting open a used filter at the end of its life, and examining the paper end caps! Yet, no one has actually done this in any of the reviews I’ve read… Hype sells, I guess.

Those of you who have your oil analyzed, do you ever get any issues reported pertaining to your filters? If so, which filters, and what do the reports say about them? Cheers!

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