When I bought my lovely Z4 Coupé, the independent car sales company I bought it off did an oil and filter change - despite me telling them not to and that I'd do it myself...
6 months, 729 miles and a strange noise coming from the oil filter housing later, I have finally got around to replacing the oil and the oil filter that they had used.
When I picked the car up and found that they'd done an oil change, I asked to check the invoice for the parts they'd used, so I knew that the oil grade was right, but never actually thought to check the brand of oil filter. Having looked around google to find out what this strange noise just off idle was coming from my engine, it turned out that quite a few people had experienced the issue and had found it to be a replacement oil filter manufactured called 'FRAM', which people are lead to believe are a good quality manufacturer. This unfortunately is not the case.
FRAM make inferior quality filters, they stick to the stock sizes, but they don't stick to the stock design of filter (i.e. number of pleats, end finish type, filtration media etc).
Here's a quick picture of what I saw after removing the oil filter cover:
As you can see, the date stamp shows the filter was manufactured in May of 2014, so definitely a good sign that the filter had indeed been changed, but check out the warped shape to the rubber head of the filter!
Upon removing the filter from the housing, I was even more shocked!
This thing was completely screwed. This is usually something that we see when a filter has been in a car for 50,000+ miles, Not 500-1000 miles! But what I've now seen through research on the web, this is fairly standard for a FRAM filter.
The other side of the filter showed yet another horror story! The rubber base of the oil filter had cracked and split! In this pic, I've compared it to a Mann Filter (who make the genuine BMW filter for the N52 motor) and you can see it is a completely different design!
With the new oil filter fitted, the engine is quiet as a mouse and the weird noise is now gone
External references:
Bimmerfest - Do not use FRAM oil filters
E90 Post - N52 Whining Noise
Youtube - BMW 325i Noise
Youtube - BMW Z4 E85 2.5si N52 engine noise
I hope this helps a few people out who have this issue and also helps many others to avoid having this issue
6 months, 729 miles and a strange noise coming from the oil filter housing later, I have finally got around to replacing the oil and the oil filter that they had used.
When I picked the car up and found that they'd done an oil change, I asked to check the invoice for the parts they'd used, so I knew that the oil grade was right, but never actually thought to check the brand of oil filter. Having looked around google to find out what this strange noise just off idle was coming from my engine, it turned out that quite a few people had experienced the issue and had found it to be a replacement oil filter manufactured called 'FRAM', which people are lead to believe are a good quality manufacturer. This unfortunately is not the case.
FRAM make inferior quality filters, they stick to the stock sizes, but they don't stick to the stock design of filter (i.e. number of pleats, end finish type, filtration media etc).
Here's a quick picture of what I saw after removing the oil filter cover:
As you can see, the date stamp shows the filter was manufactured in May of 2014, so definitely a good sign that the filter had indeed been changed, but check out the warped shape to the rubber head of the filter!
Upon removing the filter from the housing, I was even more shocked!
This thing was completely screwed. This is usually something that we see when a filter has been in a car for 50,000+ miles, Not 500-1000 miles! But what I've now seen through research on the web, this is fairly standard for a FRAM filter.
The other side of the filter showed yet another horror story! The rubber base of the oil filter had cracked and split! In this pic, I've compared it to a Mann Filter (who make the genuine BMW filter for the N52 motor) and you can see it is a completely different design!
With the new oil filter fitted, the engine is quiet as a mouse and the weird noise is now gone
External references:
Bimmerfest - Do not use FRAM oil filters
E90 Post - N52 Whining Noise
Youtube - BMW 325i Noise
Youtube - BMW Z4 E85 2.5si N52 engine noise
I hope this helps a few people out who have this issue and also helps many others to avoid having this issue
