MOTORCYCLE Oil Filter Comparison | K&N vs Hiflofiltro vs Wix vs Fram

now today we’re looking at four very popular aftermarket oil filter specifically KNN we have high flow filter oh this is the RC or the racing version wicks and Fram there’s a number of differences among all four so let’s walk through everything we’ll do some measurements some weights get a pretty good idea what we have here before we begin the K&N the wicks and the Fram are all made for the same motorcycles the high flow unfortunately when
I purchased these other filters High Flow just I could not get a high flow filter that matched the other ones but that being said I thought it’d be really interesting just to show the characteristics especially for the price point very very priced attractively secondly this is all lined up based on price so this is the lowest costing filter of the Canaan and the frame is the highest costing filter and I’ll include links directly to Amazon if
you’re curious to see if these filters fit your bike so that being said I’m just going to go line by line and just we’ll see if there are similarities the differences in that sort of thing so let’s start with the K&N this runs for seven dollars and sixty cents on Amazon it is made in Thailand and the first thing that really jumped out to me when I cut open the filter was the strength of the canister now compare that to Fram the canister is
incredibly incredibly strong and this is not a knock against Fram this is typically what you find with most even car truck filters this flexibility even with the wicks you can see now the reason why that’s important is because the burst pressure is incredibly incredibly high secondly think about if you’re using this on a dirt bike and you’re off-roading the puncture rate because the thickness and we will measure this and weight in a moment is
just incredibly incredibly strong very very I just love that the burst pressure must be I could I dig up the burst pressure rating I could tell you the wicks is 250 psi that’s the burst pressure with the wick so this must be an incredible reading but again we’ll take a measurement in a moment secondly as you can see of course Canaan is well known to use a 17 mm not that spot welded to the end of the cannister and also it has an insert for a
safety wire now high-flow again same exact thing incredibly incredibly strong cannister 17 millimeter nut again and a safety wire insert this is also made in Thailand and this runs for seven dollars and sixty seven cents it’s just seven cents more than the cane and now this is their RC version there’s also a non RC version the main parting piece with RC is the micron rating is down as low as five microns and we’ll talk more about that when we get
over to the media itself the wicks filter here is made in the USA this filter is eight dollars and seventy cents and again we’ll take a measurement and the wait in a moment there’s not much to talk about here and same with Fram it this is also made in the USA and let’s go ahead and jump over to the scale so let’s start with the cane and now of course this will weigh and the high flow will weigh more than Fryman wicks just because they have the
seventeen millimeter nut that’s a spot welded on the end but nonetheless let’s see what we have here so two point two six ounces now let’s just start by comparison on the same bikes the wicks is one point two almost and the Fram one point two almost the exact same thing now if you’re curious on the High Flow two point two two if I could easily remove the seventeen millimeter end I would but and debris weight unfortunately there’s just there’s no
I can I’m not going to start drilling these out but let’s take a measurement with the dial caliper and this is again good to know regarding the burst pressure and also just the strength of the filter so let’s see about 0.6 millimeters the wicks 0.5 8.5 so based on the three filters that are interchangeable with each other you can clearly see they can and the thickest canister and even when I squeeze the whips and the Fram in my hands I can feel
that the wicks has more resistance than the fram canister does if you’re curious with high flow so about 0.65 millimeters 0.66 okay now the next line up this is your tensioner and as you can see you either find a stamp piece of steel or a coil spring now most even with your car truck filters you tend to find stamp pieces of steel I like the coil spring I imagine this cost a little bit more to manufacture plus I just think the quality is just a
little bit better with the coil spring but I I don’t know if this can actually fail to be quite honest but the whole point behind the tensioner is it just keeps all of the components nice and tight inside the filter okay that’s all that it does now you may notice with Fram the design is a little bit different because they also attach their bypass valve into the tensioner now the whole point behind this valve is under very very cold conditions or
if the valve is clogged I’m sorry if the filter is clogged this little valve would open up and unfiltered oil would get into the engine typically they open up between 9 and 11 psi that’s pretty average and if you’re curious about how many gallons per minute typical is 8 to 11 that’s pretty average in terms of how many gallons per minute of oil is going through these filters okay so that’s all that this portion is is a tensioner and on top on the
other filters they have the bypass valve on top of the end cap a little hard to see without a screw driver but if you push this in with a screwdriver you certainly as you can see you can even see the bypass valve on the bottom there very very cool now let’s talk about the media so here with the KNN as you can see we have metal end caps and a metal center tube and on some filters in the past when I open them up sometimes you’ll find I’m gluing
some overspray in the gluing in other words when they add they attach the end caps to the media you’ll find the gluing overspray and it’s just messy in this case very very nicely made now this is a synthetic media and some other filters they will have a cellulose could be fiberglass could be a blend now typically synthetic is a better material for the long run now to give you an example if you’re more familiar with car truck filters the pure
later classic which is the red can that’s the lowest costing filter that typically runs fiberglass cellulose but pure later boss which is a filter that twice as much that is 100% synthetic the whole point behind there is that synthetic gives you the high efficiency the capacity and the flow rates and I think for your money you get a lot of bang with with cane and now regarding the micron rating not every manufacturer lists the micron rating so in
this case I cannot dig it up for canine try to take a guess I would say this is most likely 98 to 99 percent efficiency rating between 2025 microns that’s my guess but if anyone knows for sure please leave a comment would love to have that information now coming over to high flow this is a very interesting filter number one is the world’s best-selling aftermarket filter for motorcycles as you can see metal end caps metal center tube no overspray
in the gluing very very nicely made don’t don’t mind the black blemishes on the media that’s just me with my dirty fingers but incredibly nicely made now these guys have been making filters since 1955 that being said they also provide filters for other manufacturers such as Denso Toyota Ford Mazda Suzuki Nissan Hitachi and others I mean they they just do a terrific job on their filters the other thing that’s pretty cool is the steel they get it
from different parts of the world all the different all the different parts here so the steel could be from Japan the glue can be from Germany the media could be from the USA or Japan so incredibly high materials and for the price point this is a seven dollar and I think was 80 cents seven dollars and 67 cents that’s a slam-dunk I just think it’s a terrific terrific value what you have here so the other thing is the media this has a 5 micron
rating now of course it is a racing is designed really for racing but a 5 micron rating for under 8 dollars it’s just it’s almost mind-blowing very very cool if you if you’re curious regarding other manufacturers I know AMSOIL makes a 5 micron rating I believe harley-davidson also makes a 5 micron rating now let’s talk about the very popular Wix filter again metal end caps metal center – regarding the media its enhanced cellulose and the micron
rating is 21 micron so it’s a very very good rating the burst pressure again 250 psi and gallons per minute is 9 to 11 one thing I love about Wix is that they provide you with so much information other filters are really hard to find and you know doing this at my house I don’t have that kind of machinery to set this up and test burst pressures and flow rates so relying in gain that information from the manufacturer is just very very nice I love
that fact the thing is after doing a number of these videos I’ve gotten a lot of comments that the filters not made in the USA they don’t want it so if these are made in Thailand that bothers you Wix is an excellent choice even for cars and trucks Wix XP filters are excellent filters so again metal end caps metal center tube made in the USA nine to eleven gallons per minute the pressure rating is around 10 psi on the bypass valve birth pressures
250 psi now moving over to Fran these are very interesting because people get very emotional over these filters and I’ll explain why in a moment so as you can see the spacing is very good no overspray on the gluing they do run a cellulose fiber glass type of media but of course where you get the a lot of complaints is the end caps now these are not metal end caps these are most likely a fiberglass type of end cap feels paper rich but most likely
it’s a fiberglass type of material they do have a metal center tube but we’ll say this number one is we opened a Fran filter in the past that was after six thousand miles and that filter was designed up to five thousand miles and even though it was a thousand miles over its limit the end caps were in still terrific shape they were not cracking crumbling falling apart they were in perfectly perfectly good shape the other thing is I had a vehicle
many years ago had that car up to maybe 250 260 thousand miles and I changed the oil every three months and I just ran Fram and I never once had a problem the only the thing I can always say regarding any oil filter change it based on the manufacturers in other words if your vehicle or bike states to change the filter and oil every 5,000 miles follow that religiously follow that and you’ll be perfectly perfectly fine but that being said again
they have these fiberglass typisch end caps cellulose or fiberglass blended type of media and the micron again can I take it up there extra guard which is very similar to this is a I believe in 97 percent efficiency rating so micron probably between 25 are around in that ballpark but again it is made in the USA and moving to the back this is the anti drain back valve now the whole point behind this valve is when you shut off the engine instead of
having all of the oil drain out of the filter I can get this back on here this little valve retains the oil inside a filter so you don’t have a dry start so that it retains the oil inside here when you shut off the engine truly a safety feature in a sense is to prevent dry starts primarily but where you see the differences is the material typically you find a silicone and dream back valve or a nitrile rubber silicone is superior because they can
withstand lower temperatures and higher temperatures compared to nitrile rubber so KN does run a silicone anti drain back valve Fram runs a silicone and tied rein back valve now it certainly is thinner okay let’s get that scale curious so this is K&N anti drain back valve 0.11 and let’s see what the frame is the both for the same Pike point one more ah so it’s the same exact thing high flow the curious point zero seven it definitely is
thinner in my hands wicks 0.07 so again the whole point behind this valve is when you shut off the edge in the engine the oil won’t drain out of the filter so silicone anti drain back valve this it’s hard to say I couldn’t dig it up being a racing filter on guessing this is silicone if I don’t know for sure it’s it is a thinner material then the Kanan as you saw I’m guessing this is silicone though wicks this is to me it feels like silicone you
can typically typically know right away for to nitrile rubber because black tends to be nitrile rubber and register tends to be silicone but I don’t think these are nitrile rubber I think all of these are silicone anti drain back files but again if someone knows for sure if the manufacturer happens to see this please would love to have that information it’s just good to know and then of course on the bottom you have an Allsteel baseplate where
you see the differences is the number of inlet holes in the base plate so if you compare this with High Flow High Flow has more drills in the base plate but they’re thinner and the diameter which is sort of interesting is wicks again more but the diameter is thinner and take a look at four am and that’s pretty much what we have here I hope this gives you a pretty decent idea on where the differences are among all of these filters if I miss
anything if you like to see anything else if you’d like to see other filter please leave a comment below I do read comments and if they do miss anything I try to make a point to make these future videos even better and until next time thanks for watching