My persoanl experince is this. I have used Fram filters for 20 years. My truck has over 250,000 miles on it. My Rabbit has almost 290,000 miles on it. My last rabbit had over 200,000 miles on it. My other truck had over 200,000 miles. None of the engines have had any oil related failures. I have had the heads off all the engines for valve stem seal replacement. The trucks still had crosshatch in them when they had over 100,000 miles. One head was removed because the engine was old but osrt of low mileage and was using too much oil. Valve stem seals fixed that as the cylindrs looked great. The other head was removed because I bunged up a spark plug thread. The Rabbit engines were worked on because of oil consumption. Once again valve stem seals helped. Now here is the maybe on both vw engines. On the 1980 the cylinders had scratches up and down the bore. One of two reasons. Someone sucked some crap into a few cylinders or someone ran the engine low and scored the cylinder. I bought that car used with 50,000 miles and supposedly the only thing done to the car was a clutch job. Someone who knows how to drive should get 100,000 or more miles off of a clutch. Those years wer notorious for bad valve stem seals and the related engine damage from running the oil low. The other VW engien was an 1984 that sat in a junkyard after being stripped of the interior, the hood and the gas cap. It had the wierdest corrosion in 2 of the cylinders. It looks like water sat in the cylinders and pitted them.
On my new VW I change the oil as per the owners manual every 10,000 miles. I ordered a 6 pack of oil filters from Potterman. I ordered a case of Delvac 1 from AVLubes. Now I don't have to worry about shopping for filters for another year and a half. I will stiull use the Fram in my older cars as I see no filter problems. I have seen the website pictures of Fram filters and they do indeed look like a bunch of junk.
Bruce wrote:
Jim B.