Mike,
We use baldwin filters, I was not suggesting that everyone go out and buy off-brand, more that the off-brands can not be depended on for consistency. You are right about capacity, it doesn't do any good to have the best filtering ability in the world when the oil is simply going around the filter through a bypass valve. The test they ran was simply a learning exercise, not to determine the best filter out there.
We still change oil in our tractors realitively frequantly, depanding on the use that they are given, even though we use synthetic oil. It's more about the contaminate load we feel the oil is picking up than the oil "wearing" out. Two of our tractors are over thirty years old and still going strong. It's sort of funny seeing some of these guys talking of 2 or 3 hundred hours of use, put those numbers into thousands and you are just getting to the point of seeing how good a tractor really is. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
It's interesting reading your post, thanks for sharing.
I think I might have misread your post. My brther is a ME, but he finished up his last year in Ag Engineering. They gave him a co-op job with the Ag Engineering school driving their demonstration steam tractor to swap over. I think it was in the Ag school that they did the filter test.
Mike