What is any pirep? Some anecdotal first hand info about a product. Like it’s not that easy to clean, hard to get a good seal, oil temp decrease, or didn’t notice any difference. Or maybe one of the crazed zealots around here did some particle testing! Unlikely but we have to ask. What I definitely wasn’t expecting was a narrow post about why pireps are tough to depend on.
To be clear the paper filters are too organically made to say it has some size x. The stainless mesh has the benefit of being able to declare a specific size but I’ll agree that’s still not useful. Size vs rating isn’t the actual disconnect here. It’s rating type. Challenger declares an absolute rating because that’s what suits them. Tempest/Champion use a nominal (sae) rating because that’s what suits them. Neither uses the more useful (imo) beta rating.
i agree that knowing the the challenger nominal rating would be interesting but I think the actually question is whether 34 micron ASTMF316 rating has any effect vs the 40 micron nominal rating in our engines? Our tolerances are such that some 100 micron particles might be much worse than many 30 micron particles. IIRC I heard Mx Lord Busch say something about with our oil composition and engine tolerances anything below 30 micron just doesn’t matter much to us.
either way my post (like the op) was a request for more info because it’s hard to find anywhere else. We know these things are hard to compare, that doesn’t mean we don’t try. Fortunately @Mooneymite I finally found some decent usage info on The vans forum. And apparently the magnet is a PITA to clean and many people don’t save any time vs cutting conventional filters assuming you cut your own filter.