With most of us running aftermarket filters, that are meant for OTR trucks or tractors, how do we calculate the life of the filters?

one would think these filters are designed to be by the amount of gallons they filter, not miles driven, i suppose an equation could be made for such, on average a truck uses 25 gallons for every 500 miles, but what is the filter designed to filter? 11-12 hundred gallons? 20000? i've looked and can't seem to find much. just that it's a 3 micron FW filter at 99%, P553203,

Just seems to me that changing a filter designed for OTR truck on our little ones after only 15K miels, that's only about 1000 gallons of fuel. seems very under utilized to me. I know a lot of OTR trucks that go past 30K on filter and even oil changes, that would be more like 5000 gallons of fuel filtered...

 

Or am i way off base with this?

I change mine when I hit 1 of 3 things. 18 months, 30K miles, or a noticeable pressure drop. 

 

With the way I drive lately they get changed every 18 months. 

 

This last change was done at about 18 months. I had 15,440 miles on them, which equated to 482 engine hours and 1091 gallons. 

Like myself, I started cutting open my filter off my AirDog 150 at 15,000 miles the filters still looked new. So I increased to 30,000 miles still looked new. Increased to 45,000 miles just barely discoloring the filter media. The stock filter was still clean. Now I'm up to 60,000 miles and the AirDog filter is discolored pretty good and the stock filter is grey to black in color. Still even at 60,000 miles never seen a 1 PSI drop yet. This also has to do where you getting you fuels at. Cheap fuel station typically have little or no filter at the dispensing pump and name brand typically do have filter but what quality level? I know Chevron still uses a water blocking filters I'm going to have to ask what micron rating though. 

 

Here is my last 60k filter...

 

Here is one old pic of my 45k filters...

 

Here is a 15k filter... (Fleetguard)

Edited September 30, 20177 yr by Mopar1973Man