Drained oil. Wrong filter inside box. Wait until Walmart openSunday?

General Discussion
41

Some aftermarket filters must be good but short of doing enough measurements to develop a meaningful body of statistics how can one know for sure? As for quality, I feel more secure with coil spring bypass valves and other indicators like fit and finish, but don’t really know if those are valid indicators of quality where it matters.

At a minimum, one should compare the specifications to those of your car (including fit, and where applicable the presence of an anti-drainback and bypass pressure valves). For example, the only filters I’ve been able to locate that match my Outback’s bypass pressure spec. are from Subaru - I don’t know if that’s truly important, but I can get them online for a good price so the choice is a no brainer.

For a car that’s on warranty, and those like Toyota/Lexus/Honda that have a reputation for honoring certain problems well after warranty expiration, I use the manufacture’s filter. They should be good enough and, if push comes to shove, will be one less excuse for denying responsibility.

As for Fram, I haven’t used them since 30 years ago when a faulty can developed a leak after about 1000mi. - that may have been a one-off but raised doubts about quality control, and there are plenty of other choices.

42

SUPERTECH “Tested to meet or exceed all OEM quality requirements for fit and function.”

Hopefully oil changes are frequent enough thathe bypass never operates.
Since these are just filters, the bypass feature presumably is in the screw-on canister.

The incorrect filter is PS-7020. Made in Korea

43

All aftermarket parts “meet or exceed OEM specifications”, Ralph Nader and Clark Howard enforce these claims.

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44

Why’d you have to bring up Ralph Nader?

I can’t stand that guy :rage:

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45

My Corvair was a fine car for the $150 I paid for it. No one ever got killed in it.

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46

Nevada_545, Thank you for bringing up Ralph Nader, if for no other reason that it lets us “drive safely” down Memory Lane…

Back in 1967 or so, my girlfriend had a Chevrolet Corvair and my father hated us tooling around in that car. He bought me a copy of Ralph Nader’s “Unsafe at Any Speed” to try to persuade me not to drive or even ride in that car. Not that it did any good, but as it turned out, her brother wrecked her car, and that took care of that. Her father bought her a nice inexpensive replacement, a Ford Cortina…

Funny thought though, around that time, I owned a 1963 Volkswagen Bug and it also used the “swing axel” design on the rear end and my father never complained about that. Perhaps Ralph never drove a VW back then or he might have included that in his book…

Well, a couple of years ago (2015 or so–over 50-years later…), I found that book, a first edition, and sold it on eBay for over $130. On the inside cover, there was a penciled in price of $2.25, probably what my father paid for it…

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One significant difference was that the Corvair’s engine hung out behind the rear axles, unlike the VW.
As a result, the Corvair’s weight distribution was very different from that of the VW.

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But, to put the Corvair handling problem in a nutshell, if GM had simply placed a sticker in the glove compartment or on a sun visor, reminding owners that they needed to use a vastly different tire pressure in front and rear (14 psi front/28 psi rear), many of the Corvair oversteer incidents could have been prevented. When their tires were correctly inflated, a reasonably good driver could avoid oversteer with a Corvair.

If a driver was not aware of the very unorthodox tire pressure differential needed on a Corvair, he/she could wind up in trouble, and as we know from this forum, many/most drivers don’t delve into their Owner’s Manual–which was the only place where the tire pressures were listed.

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48

I owned a 1961 Corvair. A camber compensation kit which consisted of a bolt on spring between the swing axles and was available from J. C. Whitney eliminated the problem. The 1964 Corvair came with this camber compensation bar. In 1965, the Corvair adopted a fully independent rear suspension and these later Corvairs handled very well.
The issue that Nader missed was the heater on the 1961 and later Corvairs. These heaters supplied heat to the cabin from the exhaust manifold. If the seals between the cylinders and the block leaked, carbon monoxide fumes got into the cabin. The 1960 Corvair didn’t have this problem because this model.had a gasoline heater.

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That is true, but should it really be necessary for a car owner to spend money to install a fairly simple safety modification that the mfr failed to include?

Yes, if I had bought a Corvair and–belatedly–discovered this flaw, I would have spent the money for a camber compensator, but not everyone would be willing to do so. Additionally, it is likely that only the folks who read car-oriented magazines, or who regularly got the Whitney catalogue, would have even been aware of the availability of such a device.

And, GM’s decision to wait 4 model years before they installed this type of device when the car was assembled–coupled with their decision to not post a prominent reminder of the extremely unorthodox tire pressure differential–was what led to oversteering incidents that were sometimes deadly.

And–yes–the design of the Corvair’s heater could also prove to be deadly.

50

The Beetle was the same way, I think.
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51

Had a classmate that took out his Dad’s new 60 Corvair and flipped it one night with a car load. No one hurt. The car was new though and I find it hard to believe that it did not come from the dealer with the proper air pressure. I had no problem with mine in 76 but can’t recall what I used for tire pressure. I sure don’t remember anything all that different. I think it was mainly a political stunt from Nadar who has not aged well.

52

What year was yours? The second gen didn’t have that problem, I think.

I would not be surprised if someone prepping that Corvair for sale ‘fixed’ the low pressures in the front tires. No other car has ever had that kind of a pressure difference, front to rear.

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And, I recall reading a book many years ago, for which the author interviewed a lot of Chevy service managers about tire pressure for the Corvair, and the consensus was “26 psi–all around”.
That might have been fine for an Impala, but it was potentially deadly with a Corvair.

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What I should have stated was that there was much more mass/weight far behind the Corvair’s rear wheels, as compared to the VW.

It’s a matter of 6 cylinders vs 4 cylinders, and aluminum vs magnesium. And, to compound the front to rear weight differential, the Corvair engine had iron cylinder liners, the battery was placed in the rear, and even the spare tire was placed in the rear. Even without the battery and the spare tire, the rear of the car was already something like 100 lbs over the original design target, with no suspension modification. Add in the battery and the spare, and it becomes even more unbalanced.

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All true. And more hp.

56

Now, I know for a fact that the engine on my 1963 VW Bug was hung from the trans-axle. Being a teenage, shade-tree mechanic, I swapped out the engine on my bug, with an engine in better condition from a bug that gave up the ghost when its front end was wrecked.

Very simple matter, unbolt the throttle cable, remove the fuel line, generator and, coil wires, remove the rubber boots that connected the heat exchanger on the exhaust system to the heater ducts, and remove the four bolts holding the engine to the bell housing.

Now, slide an old ladder under the back bumper until it is just under the engine, put some bricks under the ladder just behind the back bumper, and then place some more bricks on the ladder at the far end. This then raises the ladder so it just touches the bottom of the engine.

Now grab the exhaust manifold and pull. The engine easily slides off the two lugs that held it in place and aligned with the input shaft on the trans-axle.

The engine lands on the ladder and “gently” settles onto the ground.

Now, grab yourself some more bricks, open the two doors, grab one door and lift, with the leverage, you lift the VW a few inches, put a brick under that side just in front of the rear tire, and do the other side. If there are only two of you doing it, it will take a couple attempts to get the rear end up high enough to slide the engine out. I had several friends and it only took one try on each side.

You then just slide the engine out on the ladder.

We then slid the “new” engine onto the ladder, slid it under the car, lowered the car back onto the ground, used the ladder to pry the engine back up high enough to slide it onto the input shaft and transaxle lugs.

We jokingly referred to this as a “Two Six-Pack” swap out, but actually, it only took like an hour total. We still had several beers left to celebrate the new engine starting up when we were finished.

So there, the VW engine is a “hanger,” put that in your “exhaust” pipe and smoke it…

PS: the heat exchanger on my bug also leaked exhaust fumes into the car. Being in upstate New York in the worst part of winter, I also used a Coleman catalytic heater. I built a box to hold it on the passenger side floor to quickly warm the car, but it gave off fumes too, but it did heat the car.

The photo below is not me, I think the ladder works better with an assistant raising and lowering the end of the ladder as needed to align the engine back. He’s working alone and the trying to balance the engine on the jack and get it aligned up again.

vw engine

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57

What was the problem?
The frontires would “bounce” up if at full pressure?
At lower pressure they would be spongy and not bounce?
Was typical tire pressure then 32 psi?

Thank you.

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Oversteer. Evasive maneuver: driver turns steering wheel sharply. Back end slides sideways. Rear swing axles let a wheel tuck under the engine. Momentum lets the car roll over while in the opposing lane or the shoulder.

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Thanks for the explanation. People always said it was easy to pull the engine. When my generator went out though I had the shop fix it and they said they had to pull the engine to get to the generator. I think the bill was $30 back in 1968 or 67 or something like that so they didn’t work very hard anyway and had it back the same day. I never had the guts to try it though.

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I think that’s what the class mate did. Not the brightest bulb and fooling around on a curve with kids in the car. He didn’t say too much except he thought he over-corrected. Now that I think about it, I wonder if he even had a license. Same age as me or should have been unless he missed a few years in school. Dad was a big turkey exec in town though so I’m sure no one said anything. Hmmm now that I think of it.