Oil and Oil Filters
Since New, my beloved subaru "BumbleBeast" has been using 20W~50 motor oil on its EA82 engine, (that SAE grade is for our warm caribbean climate) but in mineral form; mainly from Chevron and Motul; and I changed its oil and Filter at the proper interval, around 3,000 miles.
When it became impossible to find an original Subaru oil filter on local stores anymore...
...I used the Recommended oil filter in Purolator brand, for the EA82 engine, which is the Purolator L-24457
Sometimes it wasn't easy to obtain it locally,
so I used the Equivalent with slightly larger body, Purolator L-20064
However, larger body means less oil pressure on the system,
so with time, I migrated to the Purolator L-10028
When newer oil technology came, with the development of Synthetic motor oils, I chose to use Valvoline's "MaxLife" motor oil, which is formulated to be used in Higher mileage vehicles; I adopted it since year 2012 (despite that I've read about it long years ago on magazines, it took some time to reach my Country and more time to lower its price on the local market)
firstly I tried "MaxLife" in ATF form on my Wife's car with excellent results,
then in Power Steering fluids on her car and mine;
finally I switched to this "MaxLife" in Motor Oil also...
...circa 2014, which was a hard year (for me), with big decisions to take... one of them was to use this oil on extended periods of time, which I wasn't accustomed and I was afraid to try, but I gave it a go, and seems like the hardest part was to obtain a long life, synthetic oil filter to go with this oil. It doesn't make any sense to pour a long life motor oil, with a standard cardboard filter, isn't it?
So, after searching, studying and analyzing my options; I found a small, synthetic oil filter with long lifespan, designed to be used extended times, and it had very Good opinions and reputation online, in web sites and forums dedicated to motor oils and filters; but this filter is much smaller than the oil filter recommended for the Subaru EA82 engine; which according to modern lubrication standards, is Better, as a smaller bodied filter aids to keep a higher oil pressure in the system, which is ideal for this engine and its exigent hydraulic lifters... you know.
Here is the Oil Filter I chose, compared side to side with the older one which I used for long years:
The Napa Platinum 41394 is made by Wix and is pretty small,
but satisfies the requirements of the EA82 engine. Here are the Specs:
here, you can see how this small oil filter, fits on the EA82's oil pump Base:
And, believe it or not; I've been changing the Motor Oil on my Subie's EA82 on a Yearly basis, due to two reasons, money is tight and I am not using it so hard as it was used before 2014, since my small family and I, moved from the big city, to a small mountain high town, in the rural Honduras. I've been changing this synthetic "MaxLife" 20W~50 motor oil along the Napa 41394 synthetic oil filter, every December, since 2014, and the Subie runs flawlessly, no problems so far, despite it surpasses 400,000 miles; also the old used oil still comes out pretty good.
Kind Regards.
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Extra info: if you can not see the Photos I shared from Photobucket, you can add to your web browser, an extension named "Photobucket embed fix" wich will let you see the photos, flawlessly.
Greetings.