I am curious about the brand name of the filter which has been whited out although I can understand the reason for doing so.
I’m wondering about whether or not it’s an off-brand filter (one of those previously mentioned white box filters) and if it’s shoddy manufacturing that someone attempted to cover up with RTV.
I had earlier mentioned a dealer I worked for ordering some off-brand cheap Chinese stuff. At one point the parts/service manager asked us to turn in all OEM air/oil/fuel filter boxes after using the parts out in the shop. Later we discovered they were putting these cheaper, inferior parts in those empty Subaru OEM boxes and selling it across the counter as genuine OEM to the DIY crowd. At full OEM prices of course…
Later, several people brought air filters back when they discovered the filters were not completely sealing in the air filter housing due to the filters being about 6 MM thinner than the original filters. The parts/service manager blamed it on a few bad apples in the production run of OEM filters.
Several oil filters were returned also for poor fitment although as far as I know no engines were damaged. The parts/service manager BSed their way through it all…
Whew…that’s massive fraud right there…Also, I might be wrong, but the whited out areas in the OP’s pictures look like it was done on a phone with photo editing, not whited out by the mechanic
You’re right; it was massive fraud and if caught by Subaru the dealer would have been sternly warned about doing something like this. Possibly the dealer would have been in even more trouble if the warning was ignored.
Doing something about this was way over my pay grade. One time I was called up front by the parts/service manager.'
A DIY customer had found a poorly fitting air cleaner element and brought it back in. He was wanting to know why the element was thinner than the one that came out of the housing and why the appearance was different.
I was boiling because of the parts/service manager dragging me into this. I just played dumb by saying I had no idea what was going on with it and the parts/service manager would have to answer that question.
Later I discovered the parts/service manager had fed the guy a line of BS about a “packaging error at the factory”. The manager swapped the filters for them and sent them on their way AFTER keeping their OEM box. So no doubt the returned filter ended up in in the same OEM box and sold to someone who never caught on.
I agree the OP is the one who whited out the name or number on the filter. It’s been my experience that most of the so-called white box filters have no brand names on either the package or the part. They just have a part number to differentiate them although that is not true in all cases.
It’s a very sad situation for the OP and it may be difficult to go after someone due to the length of time that has passed.
It’s going to take a thorough explanation from another shop going into great detail to prevail. If that is gray RTV on the gasket that could certainly help their case. The OP really needs to maintain possession of that filter.
About 10 years ago, the Honda dealership in Jersey City, NJ was found to be “de-contenting” new cars before selling them to customers. They would remove the OEM tires, battery, air filter, and spark plugs, and substitute cheap crap that they bought from Pep Boys. Most customers were not sophisticated enough to notice the substitutions, and–after all–Who would think that a brand-new car would have something like this done to it prior to sale?
After removing the “real” stuff, it was sold by the dealership’s parts department.
This scheme was discovered when somebody developed serious misfiring problems with his almost-new Accord, and took it to the closest mechanic he could find. That mechanic discovered the cheap-o spark plugs, and then decided to look further and found the cheap-o battery, and tires of a brand that would never be used by the car mfr.
Following an investigation by the NJ Attorney General’s Office, the dealership was socked with a massive fine, and not too long after that, the two guys in shiny suits who owned the dealership lost the franchise when Honda of America revoked their franchise.
It looks like it was improperly installed. They didnt clean the surfaces and lube the gasket also installed to tight. Or some how to much Heat spilled it but doubtful I have seen this before and almost always its improperly tightened with no lube
That seems like a whole lot of effort to get very short money. The dealer buys their parts wholesale and the wholesale parts prices isn’t a lot different. The big increase is in retail. Second the dealer has to pay someone to replace those parts…that adds up. The biggest expense is going to be the labor…not the parts.
I’d be surprised if they made that much money. Not worth it if you ask me.
I, for one, don’t understand the need to white out anything in the pictures we are being shown, and am also concerned about what appears to be added sealant to the o-ring.
Some filters are tapped directly, this one seems to have a threaded insert. Even directly tapped can be tapped at an angle and cause failure. The insert in this case wasn’t installed straight, it’s at an angle. This caused the gasket to be very tight on one side, loose on the other, causing a delayed failure on the loose side.
Well last Summer we were “exposed” to a concert by the Four Tops. Others were excited but they’ve never appealed too much to me. Turns out though that it was really more like two tops or something less than four, and it seemed half the concert was a talking tribute to the dead one(s). Now I have tickets to Willie Nelson next month and I’m just hoping the guy himself will show up and they don’t have a cardboard cutout of him and a recording. I paid $10 each for tickets to Sonny and Cher back in the 60’s and took the girl I had gone to prom with in my senior year. Cher though couldn’t make it due to Chastity, so Sonny took girls from the audience. That was half a weeks earnings to go listen to some off key Cher wannabe from Minneapolis.
Where was I? Oh yeah I drove my 59 VW Beetle up there with the sun roof open. It didn’t have an oil filter. Just a screen and a gasket. Shut up Bing. OK.
The Four Tops, Shirelles, Johnny Mathis, Righteous Brothers and dozens more. The oldies stations in my neighborhood seem to be stuck on the 80s and newer. And Sirius plays the same recordings over and over. I remember listening to John Records Landecker on WLS long ago when the Beatles were about all that was played.
