Old unused oil filter OK to use?

Some stores have them on the shelf longer than that. They'll age much faster in the heat of an engine's operation, yet they're on some cars for a year or more. I'd think that if the rubber gasket isn't dried out or cracking, and paper dust doesn't fall out when you knock it around a bit, the filter should be OK. Five or ten years old, I'd be careful. Might have rust inside the can, depending on the climate it was sitting in.

Dan

That's old?

Maybe, if we're talking forty or fifty years, you might see some degradation. I'd be wary of using NOS Model A filters. But a year isn't going to hurt anything. Hell, I regularly will buy a five year supply of filters when they are on sale, and keep them until I need them.

--scott

Depends on how they have been stored.. And I would guess you dont know how they have been stored.. Humidity, temperature, etc...

Use them at your own risk.. Oil filters are not very expensive, per unit mile.

Not one-two years... depends on what they've been exposed to if they are bad or not. If they've been inside and dry they are probably fine.

I've bought extra filters at times (like when an autoparts store was going out of business and had a bunch of motorcraft filters the right size) and stored them indoors and they've been just fine.

So may be the ones sitting on the shelf at the parts store.

Not unless they were stored out in the rain. If you said they were 10 or 20 years old, I might worry about the rubber gasket and internal bypass valves getting brittle, but not at only 2 years.

Of course if these are Frams, they sucked when they were brand new and don't get better with age....

Not true. Old frams didn't suck, so if you have a stock of 70's era frams, they're preferable to new ones. Of course, good like finding one to fit an engine that didn't exist in the 70's.

;)