Oil filter sales make up 35% of all heavy duty filter sales, which represents the highest sales of any filter category. As a result, it’s critical for any operator or counter salesperson to understand how oil performance affects a fleet, and how a reliable, long-lasting filter can impact overall fleet operations and profitability.
Oil's primary responsibility is to provide lubrication to the moving components of a vehicle or piece of equipment's engine. This lubrication helps prevent abrasion, premature failure and costly maintenance.
Properly maintained oil helps eliminate corrosive materials from the engine system, reducing metal pitting and wear and preventing the related downtime.
Effective oil helps reduce heat caused by friction, helping reduce the chances of damage associated with overheating.
Oil’s core responsibility is providing the lubrication needed to help minimize metal-on-metal friction in an engine system, reducing the system damage typically associated with abrasion.
Much like any system fluid, oil has a set of physical and chemical properties that affect its overall performance. These properties change over the course of an engine’s lifespan and should be tested to diagnose oil and system health.
Regular testing, combined with proper filtration, is the most reliable way to ensure minimal engine wear and maximum service life.
Tap the sections below to learn more about each individual metal or material that can be present in an engine’s oil.
Wear metals are the by-product of normal vehicle operation, and result from metals eroding off of system components. Their presence can be used as an early warning sign for critical component failure.
Contaminant metals are the metals that commonly enter an oil system due to poor system sealing or performance. Common sources of contaminant metals include foreign particulate, fuel leaks or soot issues.
Additive metals can be found in many common oil additives. The level of additive metals is monitored to determine the speed of additive depletion in an oil system. It is also helpful as a reference point, as inexplicable levels of additive metals can also be a sign of other system issues.
Multi-source metals are the metals that can be a result of numerous sources. When using multi-source metal levels as a diagnostic tool, all potential sources must be considered to identify actionable conclusions.
During oil testing, a number of oil properties are examined beyond metal content. The findings of this analysis can be used to identify a number of engine issues ranging from poor combustion to the presence of leaks in vital parts of a system. Click or tap the boxes below to learn more about each tested property.
Poor oil quality or performance not only directly impacts a customer's fleet performance, but can be an early warning sign for a number of other serious vehicle or equipment issues. Download Luber-finer's oil testing service brochure to help communicate the importance of oil testing to your customers.
Oil filters make up a large percentage of all filter sales. They are responsible for preventing damage to, and maintaining the uptime of, many of the most critical systems in heavy duty vehicles and equipment.
This helps prevent many types of system damage, including:
The diagram below represents a standard spin-on filter, other filter types may feature different components. Click on individual filter components to learn more about their function and construction.
A filter's gasket is designed to create a tight, seamless fit between the filter and a vehicle's engine. A durable gasket that can withstand the corrosive and high temperature environment of an engine compartment is critical to preventing oil leaking.
The threaded plate of a filter is the component that spins onto the thread of an engine. It allows fluid to enter the filter's canister, where it flows into a compartment between the filter media and shell.
With a specially engineered hole size and slope grade, a filter's threaded plate helps control the flow rate of fluid into a filter.
The grommet's primary responsibilities are to act as a spacer, holding filter components in place, and help seal off a filter's main chamber from the gasket and threaded plate that form the fit between a filter and an engine.
Filter media is the component most responsible for the overall effectiveness and performance of a filter. Comprised of a dense, yet porous fiber, the media captures potentially damaging particulate, while allowing critical system fluids to pass through the filter back into a vehicle’s system.
Filters can be outfitted with different media types to provide different levels of performance. For example, Luber-finer’s Imperial XL oil filters offer an innovative synthetic media, which provide increased filtration capacity over standard media alternatives.
The center tube of a filter serves two primary functions, that are critical to overall filter performance.
Much like the grommet near the thread of a filter, the end cap helps seal off the main component of a filter and prevents oil from leaking into its shell.
An adhesive applied to the end cap of a filter during the manufacturing process helps ensure that the components that make up a filter's internal components will maintain a proper fit over the life of a filter.
The leaf spring acts as a spacer to ensure that filter components fit tightly to maintain the integrity of a filter's structure. The leaf spring is engineered to provide a small amount of give when a vehicle hits a bump in the road or pothole, to help prevent filter damage due to concussive forces.
A durable filter canister is critical to containing a system’s oil as it passes through a filter. This is especially true in high demanding applications, such as extreme temperatures or heavy use situations.
Sacrificing canister quality presents an opportunity for filter rupture, especially as an oil filter reaches capacity. These ruptures completely stop proper filtration, and often prevent fluids from entering a system at all.
Luber-finer's canisters are manufactured from steel, which is proven to withstand regular operation when used in accordance with prescribed replacement intervals.
While there are slight differences among types of oil filters, especially between standard and premium varieties, all oil filters operate largely the same.
Once oil reaches the filter, it enters through small holes in the filter's threaded plate. From there, it moves down a small compartment in between the canister and the media.
As liquid begins to work its way through a filter's media, a majority of all particulate larger than the filters micron rating will be captured by media fibers and prevented from entering the fluid system.
Free from the particulate captured by the filter's media, fluid exits the system from the hole in the middle of its spin-on threaded plate.
Efficiency
Capacity
Restriction
When used in accordance with OEM warranty prescribed replacement intervals,
A filter’s efficiency rating is the key factor in determining how well it can protect an engine from damage caused by foreign matter. The higher a filter media’s efficiency rating, the greater percentage of particulate it will capture, preventing the particulate from entering your vehicle’s vital lubrication systems.
Luber-finer® filters are proven to remove particulate 5 microns or larger more effectively than competitive alternative filters.
Not all filters are engineered to effectively capture the same amount of particulate. Once a filter’s media reaches its capacity limit, the filter’s ability to protect an engine is severely compromised.
Luber-finer® full flow oil filters provide industry-leading capacity. Even our standard full flow oil filter provides significantly greater capacity than comparable alternatives.
Oil restriction occurs when oil becomes viscous due to cold weather or when oil is allowed to degrade over the course of time. This restriction is problematic for engines as it prevents a proper oil flow and lubrication of engine components.
The true test of any filter, or heavy duty vehicle, is its ability to perform under extreme conditions. Luber-finer® filters are specifically engineered to perform as optimally as possible in cold weather or when oil has become viscous due to extended service life.
Where many competing filters rely on combinations of media technology, which limit oil flow, Luber-finer® filters allow for minimal restriction of oil in harsh conditions – without sacrificing industry-leading efficiency.
*At 25 gallons per minute flow rate using ISO4548-1 in-house LFP9001 testing vs. competitive filters
In order to offer oil filtration solutions to customers who face harsh operating conditions, or need to meet high performance goals, Luber-finer® offers 2 types of innovative premium filters. Whether a customer is battling oil degradation and corrosion, or needs to extend their filter life and reduce replacement labor and downtime, we've engineered a premium filter to meet their unique needs.
Being able to properly specify and recommend premium filters to help customers overcome their pressing filter challenges is a great way to boost sales, while increasing customer satisfaction.
An effective method to match customers with premium filters is to match a customer's pain point with the specific benefits of a premium filter.
The IMPERIAL XL (Extended Life) features a 100% synthetic filter media that keeps oil flowing smoothly while delivering enhanced filter efficiency over a longer time period. When combined with regular oil testing, XL filters can help reduce the frequency of filter replacements and help enhance vehicle uptime while reducing total service and filter spend.
The Luber-finer® TRT™, Time Release Technology filters provide a controlled release of a highly concentrated liquid additive into an engine’s oil. To optimize the benefits of this additive package, a patent-pending release mechanism linearly dispenses a constant quantity of additive into the oil, to help combat harmful acids that build up over the miles.
Oil filters are the largest segment of the heavy duty filtration market by a wide margin. As such, it's extremely important for sales representatives to understand the key benefits and associated customer pain points related to oil filtration.
Providing filter solutions to customers' oil filtration challenges is one of the most effective ways to drive sales, in both dollar value and volume. Due to the high likelihood that a fleet will rely on one supplier for its filter needs, oil filter sales are often the key to converting an an entire fleet to Luber-finer® filters.
Using Prescribed Maintenance Interval (PMI) Information to Understand Customer Filter Needs
One of the most effective ways to increase sales, and provide excellent customer service and support, is to help your customers outline a filter replacement plan and schedule.
By being able to provide this number, you help your customers outline their fleet’s ideal filter consumption. In addition, it provides a rough estimate of what they can expect to spend on a specific type of filter over the course of a business year, as well as help them develop a reorder schedule that will promote proper inventory controls and manage expenses.
The equations above will help you define the number of standard oil filters needed by a customer in a year. The number will decrease slightly for premium filter options developed to extend replacement intervals, such as the Imperial XL series.
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