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Anybody tried K&N Oil Filters?
- Thread starter skibumwi
- Start date
skibumwi
New member
The ones I saw last year said CHINA, who knows where the are really made, over on the 1600 forum one rider dissected about 10 different brands, K&N came out near the bottom, you can purchase BMW or Mann filters on Amazon for a good price, I bought 8 of the older style filters for about $10 each shipped, so i’am good for awhile
Go Bucks!
Jim
lee
Debbie's Servant
The bikes leave the factory with a OC 306 and the manual calls for OC 619 for the first and all oil changes.
It's one of those BMW mysteries.
I like using a quality cup style wrench.
riderr1150gsadv
Well-known member
Beemerboneyard has the correct filters for our bikes and I have been getting them from there. I also use OEM air filters as K&N don't provide better filtration either.. YMMV
I've used the K&N on my RS wet head. Easy on , easy off. Engine has not blown up! 28k miles.
Not sure the made in China fear is completely warranted. iPhones are made there, BMWs are made there, Volvo is now chinese brand, VWs are made there. Both Boeing and Airbus make parts there.
Not sure the made in China fear is completely warranted. iPhones are made there, BMWs are made there, Volvo is now chinese brand, VWs are made there. Both Boeing and Airbus make parts there.
pglaves
#13338
My suggestion is very simple. Cut a BMW filter apart and cut a K&N filter apart. Observe the construction. Observe how fine or course the filter media is. Observe how many pleats there are in the filter media. Then reach a conclusion. Or go find one of the many articles documenting how this was done. Then reach a conclusion. I agree that China can produce some good products, and I also agree that it can produce monumental crap. But do your own research. I have read several such test articles. I know what I think but my telling you won't do any good. You will need to actually do critical thinking for yourself.
I don't know about all the oil filter stuff...but I've seen quite a bit. I kinda like the Mahle filters (for oil) because it seems they are the ones NASCAR uses. I've seen good ones, bad ones and even had to air-chisel a brand name one off a Chebby 5.3 (aluminum) recently 
A friend had a conversion on his 7.3 Ford Powerstroke that ran a roll of the specifically cheap toilet paper- and it worked.
I don't think I've ever heard of some one having engine damage from a "bad" oil filter.....unless it was installed double-gasketed or so loose it fell off. If I don't have 40 filters in the shop, I don't have one. I find some are better than others per application....and all work.
OM
A friend had a conversion on his 7.3 Ford Powerstroke that ran a roll of the specifically cheap toilet paper- and it worked.
I don't think I've ever heard of some one having engine damage from a "bad" oil filter.....unless it was installed double-gasketed or so loose it fell off. If I don't have 40 filters in the shop, I don't have one. I find some are better than others per application....and all work.
OM
beemerphile
New member
Proving that one filter gets 10 micron particles at 90% and another gets 15 micron particles is easy enough to do. Proving that the difference makes a difference is not so trivial. Up until the early 50's lots of engines ran without oil filters using oil and manufacturing tolerances that were greatly inferior to those of today. Lots of small engines still run without filters. BMW motorcycles until 1969 ran without them. So an engine running 28K miles or even 40K miles with no issues on a crummy filter is easily believed. Lots of riders these days get new-bike-itis long before harm could come (or gain could accrue) to the old one from variables such as this.
I doubt that the difference between using oil and filters that meet the minimum manufacturer's spec and using the very best obtainable oil and filters will ever be documented because no researcher will live that long.
I doubt that the difference between using oil and filters that meet the minimum manufacturer's spec and using the very best obtainable oil and filters will ever be documented because no researcher will live that long.
pglaves
#13338
Indeed they did. And routine maintenance included taking almost the entire engine apart to clean the slingers. That fails to convince me that filters and filter quality don't count. I confess to being an outlier maybe, because Voni and I tend to keep bikes for a long time. My first K75 died in a crash at 369,000 miles. Voni's R1100RS is out front at 412,000 miles (the engine was replaced at about 390K making ugly bottom end sounds). My R1150R is in the garage with 190,000 miles. So oil and filters count to me. I, by the way, have always used simple petroleum SG rated motorcycle oil in the correct viscosity - Castro dino 4T to be precise, once GTX lost its SH rating.
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The pre 1970 bikes had a different bottom end in terms of bearings...the later bikes really need filtration. Also, the only real oil at the time for the older bikes was non-detergent oil which allowed for particulates to fall out of solution over time. Cleaning the sludge out of the bottom of pans was an essential maintenance item. I've heard that people riding the older machines would routinely go 80-100K miles before slinger service. With detergent oil, I'd probably not go past 40K miles. More frequent oil changes on slinger-equipped bikes could very well keep combustion products from building up and finding their way into slingers.
Guess that's not really answering the K&N filter question!
Guess that's not really answering the K&N filter question!
beemerphile
New member
Paul, you are definitely an outlier on mileage and retaining bikes. You can read discussions of people trading 2017 GS's because an electronic dash came out. BMW's 3asy Ride plays into the constant exchange of motorcycles. Half of my fleet is over 25 years old as well, but unfortunately I have not covered the miles that you and Voni have. You have several strong data points for "good" filters and "common" oil. Missing is anyone who attests to have run engines into the ground at significantly lower mileage from having run inferior filters. The chance remains that you might have achieved a similar result with $2 SuperTech filters from WalMart. Nobody knows. Certainly you have reason for great confidence in the regimen that you have chosen. But that is different from disproving the null hypothesis.
pglaves
#13338
Unless a person's safety is involved my general attitude is to say, "Here is what I think and would do." "But it is your bike and your money so do what you like." On a safety issue I can get a bit more dogmatic.
K&N had a filter recall, due to leakage around welded nut, one rider crashed on a track due to this failure, google it, K&N are involved in a lawsuit over this. Like I said earlier on the 1600 forum someone took apart the top 10 or so filters and did a full report, BMW, Malhe, and Mann along with several others were top rated
K&N was about even with Fram neither were considered high quality
That said I have nothing against K&N as I use their air filters on both my cars, not their oil filters though
K&N was about even with Fram neither were considered high quality
That said I have nothing against K&N as I use their air filters on both my cars, not their oil filters though
Have you done this with the BMW and the K&N? Just thinking critically.
pglaves
#13338
No. I did it with a BMW and a Fram years ago and wrote about it in the Owners News. I have also read several similar articles by others testing up to as many as a dozen brands. In one such test I read K&N actually did fairly well. An internet search for Oil Filter Tests will provide enough reading for the rest of the day.
paddlefoot
New member
More proof
Im sort of in a different camp. I can't give you experience from 100k plus on a BMW but in a lot of ways mechanical stuff is mechanical stuff. 30 years ago I was an H-D service manager trying to get folks to accept that 20-50 would work well in their big twins. Every "Real" Harley rider knew that nothing less than grade 60 would keep one running. I got into aviation and am now an airframe and powerplant mechanic. Lots of old technology in those recip aircraft engines but they run under a lot of stress because they are constantly above 50% of their max rated power. That introduced me to oil analysis and wear trending. I was having problems with my Ford Powerstroke and put a bypass filter on that to help keep the oil from sludging up with diesel soot and clogging up the HEUI fuel injectors. Doing oil analysis and checking the wear package I was able to go from 3000 mile oil changes to 10,000 mile oil and filter changes and the oil still has over half of it's wear package in operation when the oil is changed. Check out Blackstone-labs.com and read some of their informational articles for their experiences with lubrication. I wish I could get a compact bypass filter for all of my vehicles but unless I put it together myself it's probably not going to happen. The bypass cleans all of the oil once in five or six passes through the standard oil filter to avoid overpressure in the system. The standard Ford filter is a 40 micron filter and the bypass gets everything above 3 microns. I have well over 180k on the first engine I installed the bypass on and over 60k on the second and both show very low wear metals in the oil. The analysis did pick up a bit of bearing streaking when I made a cross country trip in a dust storm with a less than perfect air filter seal.
Im sort of in a different camp. I can't give you experience from 100k plus on a BMW but in a lot of ways mechanical stuff is mechanical stuff. 30 years ago I was an H-D service manager trying to get folks to accept that 20-50 would work well in their big twins. Every "Real" Harley rider knew that nothing less than grade 60 would keep one running. I got into aviation and am now an airframe and powerplant mechanic. Lots of old technology in those recip aircraft engines but they run under a lot of stress because they are constantly above 50% of their max rated power. That introduced me to oil analysis and wear trending. I was having problems with my Ford Powerstroke and put a bypass filter on that to help keep the oil from sludging up with diesel soot and clogging up the HEUI fuel injectors. Doing oil analysis and checking the wear package I was able to go from 3000 mile oil changes to 10,000 mile oil and filter changes and the oil still has over half of it's wear package in operation when the oil is changed. Check out Blackstone-labs.com and read some of their informational articles for their experiences with lubrication. I wish I could get a compact bypass filter for all of my vehicles but unless I put it together myself it's probably not going to happen. The bypass cleans all of the oil once in five or six passes through the standard oil filter to avoid overpressure in the system. The standard Ford filter is a 40 micron filter and the bypass gets everything above 3 microns. I have well over 180k on the first engine I installed the bypass on and over 60k on the second and both show very low wear metals in the oil. The analysis did pick up a bit of bearing streaking when I made a cross country trip in a dust storm with a less than perfect air filter seal.
