PTC Custom Fit Synthetic Oil Filter - Spin On

Video Transcript for PTC Custom Fit Synthetic Oil Filter Review

Hey, everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today, we're gonna be checking out the line of PTC custom fit, synthetic oil filters. With this being a custom fit part, you've got to make sure you get the right one for your particular vehicle. So be sure to use our Fit Guide and enter in your vehicle's information, that way you get set up with the right filter. When it comes to maintaining your own vehicle, you know, oil changes are arguably the most important thing. You know, if you're gonna neglect a couple maintenance items, definitely don't neglect your oil.

That's kind of the blood, if you will, to your vehicle's engine and that's what's gonna help keep it running for a lot of miles. Especially, you know, with a lot of more modern cars today, all the tolerances in the machine that goes into to putting that engine together is so good that, you know, you can really stretch those oil change intervals out. You know, some manufacturers go up to 10,000 plus miles, believe it or not. And so, you know, especially if you plan on running like those longer intervals, you wanna make sure to not only use a quality oil, but a quality filter as well. This one is gonna be designed to work with synthetic oils, specifically designed to work with those.

And, you know, honestly, that's kind of what a lot of manufacturers are recommending nowadays, anyway, because, you know, to stretch out seven, eight, 10,000 miles, you're gonna want a good oil and a good filter. With that said, though, you know, this one is rated to provide filtration for up to 10,000 miles. With that said, though, check your vehicle's owner's manual. You know, just because this is rated for 10,000 miles, if your manufacturer recommends you change it every 5,000 miles, then follow those guidelines, and that'll give you the best performance. You know, as far as the quality of the filter goes, I mean, there's not a ton to talk about here really.

It's an oil filter, but you know, we're gonna cover as much as we can here. As far as the quality of the filter goes, I mean, it feels pretty good. It's a solid case, you know. I'm trying to squeeze it. It's not flexing at all.

It doesn't feel, you know, really any worse or better than a lot of other filters that I've used in the past, from the stock and limb type ones to other branded ones all the way up. I mean, I've even used some of the more performance oriented filters that are a little higher end and you know, 200 bucks, and it doesn't feel any poorly constructed or better constructed than those. So I'd say it's right on par with a lot of the other ones. You know, it's gonna give you that basket. Obviously, that's important. You wanna keep the fluid in your engine, right I will say that when you change your oil, make sure, so when you unscrew your old filter, make sure that that basket off the old filter comes off. Sometimes I like to stick to the engine block, and then if you don't notice it and you thread the new one on, it's called double basketing, it's gonna leak. So just kind of a tech tip, pay attention to that when you do that. And then what I like to do, too, is just kind of get my finger wet with a little oil when I pull the old one off. I just kind of put a little bit around it, the opening here, the seal, and that way it just kind of just has a real lubrication. You don't have to do it. I mean, everyone's got their own way but that's what I like to do. With that said, you know, it's pretty decent. It's hard to say how good it's actually gonna work unless we, you know, really put some miles on it, cut it open, inspect it, maybe send it out. But I don't feel, you know, I don't see any reason to believe that it wouldn't do a good job. A matter of fact, I'm actually putting this on my own personal vehicle today. So I've got confidence in it. I think it ought to do a pretty good job. One of the big things for me that I wanted to make sure of is that this new one had what's called an anti drain back valve in it, okay That's really important to me. And this one does, all right And what that means is whenever you turn your engine off it's gonna prevent the oil from, you know, freely flowing back into the filter and it's gonna keep that oil up inside of the engine. And the reason for that is it's gonna make it a little bit easier on your motor when you do cold starts, right So you're done driving, park it for the night, next morning, it's gonna do a little bit better job of keeping oil inside the engine and not cause so much wear and tear upon that initial startup, because, honestly, that's where a lot of the engine wear and tear is originated from, is on those initial startups and things like that. Because, you know, with the oil all down into the pan and not running through the engine, you have just a split second of metal, no contact. And so, having an anti-drain back valve in here is just a little extra insurance that, you know, it'll help prevent that additional wear or cause any issues as far as that goes. So, I just wanted to compare the synthetic one to the other line that we offer. This is also a PTC oil filter. This one works with conventional and synthetic oils. So if you, you know, you might have an older vehicle, you just run cheap oil through, just to kind of keep it going, this might be a better option for you. I've used these in the past quite a few times, actually. Never had any issues. This will be my first time using this one and I'm switching out because I actually recently just purchased a new vehicle, a lot nicer vehicle. They suggest using synthetic oil, full synthetic, and that's what I'm doing. And so that's why I'm out there with this. With that said, this one will work with conventional and synthetic oils, but my thought is, you know you have one specifically designed for synthetic, why not use it, right They got that in mind. You know, I feel like the filtration would probably be better. You know, having a full synthetic, it's got more lubricity, and so my thought is this one can probably filter out the particles a little bit better than this one. Will this one still work Absolutely. But like I said, my thought is you have one specifically designed, why not use that one, right So curious to see how this one will work out. But with that said, why don't we go ahead, get underneath that vehicle and just kind of do an oil change together If you wanna kind of check it out, see how it fits, see how it compares. Actually, the current one that I have on my vehicle is actually an OEM type one, so I think it'll be cool to pull that one off and kind of do a side by side here and see how they look and kind of just get a feel for 'em. So since I want to pull off the original filter and just to kinda compare it to the new PTC one, I figured why not just show the oil change as well So if you're curious on how to do this or want a little bit of advice, feel free to follow along. If not, you know, you can skip ahead little bit and check out that comparison. I'm working on, this is a Cadillac Escalade today. You know, every vehicle is gonna be kind of the same in terms of the process to do, and everyone has their own way doing it. This is mine. What I like to do is get the engine warm. I mean, not full temp or blazing hot or anything. Just warm it up a little bit. That helps that oil kind of flow a little bit more. And then what I like to do is pop the hood and take off the oil cap. Set it somewhere where you're not gonna lose it or forget about it. And what that's gonna do is help just kind of vent everything and help that oil drain a little bit faster. So underneath of our vehicle here, we're not gonna worry about the filter just yet. We wanna drain all the engine oil out first. So you wanna locate the drain plug. In our case, mine's right here. You know, you really wanna be sure that you're taking the engine oil out, so find your engine oil pan. The drain plug's usually gonna be somewhere on it. In our case, I have a 15 millimeter head bolt. That's what I'm gonna pull out. And I suggest kinda having everything set up here. So I have my oil catch, my used oil catch pan here. Got my tools ready. If you need one of these catch pans, we actually sell quite a few of them here at etrailer. And we also sell tools, as well. So regular tools, we got some oil filter wrenches and things of that nature, too. So check that out if that's something you need. But with that said, we went in and did all our here, and get all the oil draining. When I'm unthreading this, I like to actually apply a little bit of pressure on it, forward pressure, and you can kind of feel when the threads stop. I have to do one quick motion here so I don't try to make a big mess. So we got it draining out. We'll give that a few minutes, let all of that oil get out, and then we come back to it. So once the oil drains out and we kind of get down to the real slow drip, you know, that's usually sufficient. You can sit here all day and it'll keep dripping like that, you know, honestly. Or what some people like to do as well, let's go ahead, leave this, keep dripping, change the filter, screw that back on and then put the bolt in. For today's demonstration, we're just gonna go ahead and put our bolt back in. I like to, while it's draining, just examine your seal or the O-ring around the bolt, if you have one. And just check everything, you know, clean up the threads. Just, take a good look at everything, see what's going on. Sometimes it'll be a magnet on the end of the bolt. You can examine that for any metal shavings and kind of just get an idea of what's going on inside of your engine. But I will kind of just wipe that clean. And what I like to do, as well, is use paper towels. So if you use rags, I know chances are good nothing's gonna happen, but if you we're to get a particle or something, a piece of the rag on the bolt and get inside of your motor, you know, it's not great. But these paper towels, they're gonna disintegrate pretty much immediately. So, you know, it's your call. But we'll go ahead, get that threaded back in. Get it done by hand. And I'll get this out of the way here so we got some room to work and then tighten it back down. I'm sure the manufacturer has a torque specification. What I like to do is just snug it up and give it a little extra. I mean, you don't have to crank down on these things by any means. Hand snug, you know, bump it a little bit more and that'll be sufficient. But with that done, now we can go ahead and move on to getting that filter off. To get your oil filter off, you got a few different ways you can do it. You might be able to get help to remove it by hand. We actually sell some tools here to do it. We have these type of wrenches. I'm really not too crazy about 'em. You kind of just fight 'em. I like the claw type ones where you put it on a ratchet and it claws it. Those work really well. In our case, on ours, I'm gonna do this so tight. But if you we're to buy one, I'd recommend getting the claw. Those are really neat work a lot of times. You know, I'm just wanna keep things old-fashioned. I just got a big pair of pliers here. You know, you really don't have to worry too much, 'cause we're gonna be replacing this filter. And so I'll break it loose like that. All right. And now that I have it loose, I'm gonna go ahead and get my pan set up here so we don't get oil all over us. And just like the bolt, I like to spin it, let that oil come on out. So I'll just get it completely removed, quickly let it come down. And just like the bolt, we'll give us a couple minutes to drain and get all that old oil out of the motor. So once it's all drained out, what I like to do is just kinda clean everything out. Then usually you'll have a little bit of residual oil there. And I had talked about it before, I decided to put some around that O-ring, just a little of that lubrication. And now I'll just thread this on. And so make sure you're going on straight, you know, you're not cross threading it. It should go on pretty easy. And with these, you're just gonna tighten down by hand. So, you know, mine's just kinda hard to grab. You just don't have a ton of working room here, but, you know, usually once it's snug, if you get around three quarters of a turn on it, it'll turn. It's usually pretty good. So I get as tight as I can there, kind of clean it off and then that way, whenever we put new oil in the motor and start everything up and check it, we can just take a quick peek under here and make sure it's still dry and clean, that way we verify it's not leaking. So back up top, we can fill the oil up through the oil valve. So, you know, check your manufacturer's recommendation in terms of, you know, what weight oil to use, how much of it and so on. What I like to do is get it pretty close. So this motor calls for six quarts. I'm gonna put five and a half in, something like that. Start up the truck, let it run through for a second, shut it off, kind of give it a minute, let that all drain back down. The reason for doing that is that way the filter fills up. And then I'll recheck it and then top it off as needed. So let's go ahead and we'll get that done. So once we get pretty close, which I think that ought do it, we'll go ahead and start up the truck, give it a second to run, and look underneath, make sure we're not leaking or anything like that. Gonna let the oil settle again, check it. And if you need to add a little bit more, not a big deal. We can add it to the framework. If we're right on, we're all good to go. So we don't need to let it run for crazy amount of time or anything like that. I usually just give it a good 10, 15 seconds, let that oil kind of flow through the motor and fill up that filter. And that ought to be sufficient. So I'll go ahead, shut it down and get the rest of the job done. Whenever you're ready to check your oil, what I like to do is pull the dipstick, wipe it clean, that way we kind of reset it, I guess, if you will. And make sure you're sufficient, and just like we talked about. So I'm actually in pretty good shape. I might put another small splashing, about halfway up. You know, if you're happy with it, it's at the proper level, you're good to go. It's really all there is to it. If not, add it accordingly. So like I promised, I just wanted to compare, just give you something here. So here's the filter that I pulled off this. It's an ACDelco one. They're, honestly, very similar in terms of how they look and feel. If these we're the same color and the labels we're removed, I'd have a very hard time I'm telling you which one's which, so that's good, at least in my opinion, you know, in terms of the construction quality and things of that nature. If you're curious about cross referencing your filter, there should be a description at the bottom of the page. It has several filters. I believe there's Fram, ACDelco, kind of some of the more popular ones. So, you know, that's there for you if you need it. But, you know, other than that, a nice piece. And with all that said, that'll finish you up our look at of the line of PTC synthetic custom fit oil filters..