End of the Road for Napa Gold filters......??

[slingworks]

Well, for me at least, I think it's the end of the road with Napa "Gold" filters.....

Until recently every filter I've bought for a 3.7 (or for that matter most anything else) was a Napa Gold. Yeah a few others here and there, but I always had good luck with Napa.

So the other day I changed oil/filter on my Liberty. Picked up the usual oil and a Napa Gold filter. Only to my dismay I found this one was "made in China" Not really happy about it, but used it anyway, considering I needed one.

What did I get? A disaster.

The Jeep would not maintain oil pressure and the light/chime must have gone off 20 times, on and off while driving a short distance down the road. I could hear the valve train making noise, up and down as the oil pressure basically came and went in relation to throttle.

I came home and put the old filter back on. Old as it was new in August. Napa Gold but made in USA. Guess what? Problem solved. After looking at the problem filter made in China I noticed some differences. Looked online and apparently there are metric shit-tons of people complaining about the new Gold filters........

Only thing I can guess is that the new filter was restricting the flow of oil to some degree. (Wonder if the Wix filters are still decent?)

I just wanted to share my experience mainly to keep another from having a similar situation. Anyone have a similar situation?

 

[nmCRD]

Check out this Youtube video,

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About a year old so Napa Gold was made in China back then.

 

[slingworks]

I bought my last USA Gold filter in August. I must have gotten lucky and got old stock. Looking back If I had known, I would have probably bought a couple more.

I'll probably pick up a couple Wix filters at Rural King when I go to town next.....

 

[JeepJeepster]

Yeah, its highly unfortunate that Napa now uses China filters. They switched over sometime in the last ~2 years. Evidently, ~5 years ago, Mann & Hummel couldn't keep up with demand, so they had to bring over some filters that were made in Germany. I have some, but decided not to use them, just gonna hang onto them for no reason.

Anyway, supposedly half of the US still gets made in USA Napa filters while the other half gets CHINA. No clue if thats actually true.

I've quit buying oil filters from Napa and have stocked up on Mopar filters.