Is the Prius oil filter as bad as this one?

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Technical Discussion' started by pasadena_commut, Jun 9, 2025 at 2:09 PM.

  1. pasadena_commut

    pasadena_commut Senior Member

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    Ran into this video today:



    where they test some OEM oil filters. The Toyota filter tested was 90915-YZZD1, whereas the one for the Prius is 90915-YZZN1. In short, the Toyota filter tested has a very high flow rate and abysmal filtering. Is the N1 variant the same construction, with similar performance?

    Key points in the video:

    0:26 - picture of the filter - the last 2 digits cannot be read but the link in the text is to the YZZD1.
    5:56 - table showing filtering results for various size particles
    6:43 - table showing filtering capacity
    8:29 - tear down of the filter
    9:29 - comparison of filter scores with a variety of other filters

    They did buy the Toyota filter from Amazon, which is often a bad choice, but it appears that the seller is Amazon itself, so unlikely to be a fake. As Amazon links never work, go there and enter B0044AVLF0.

    I did wonder if they got a bad filter, but what are the odds that the only one they buy is bad unless broken units are extremely common?

    EDIT: added the 5:56 and 6:43 time points
     
    #1 pasadena_commut, Jun 9, 2025 at 2:09 PM
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2025 at 12:58 AM
  2. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    Yeah I don't know this oil filter debacle has been going on since the eighties. I use a fram or wix mid line call it done . Oil goes on very light tan color comes out almost coffee colored . Whatever the mileage . It's worked almost 50 years for me . Never any engine failures yet .
     
  3. Mendel Leisk

    Mendel Leisk Senior Member

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    Abysmal? I’m clueless, but have read it’s a balancing act, flow rate versus filtering.
     
  4. pasadena_commut

    pasadena_commut Senior Member

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    Filtering more than 100X worse than the Bosch, 5-10X worse than the Motorcraft (the 2nd worst filter in this set of 4). Worst filtering in 16 filters, worse than Fram.
     
  5. BiomedO1

    BiomedO1 Senior Member

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    I use the Fram Ultra on mine. Better filtering, but sacrificing a bit of flow when compared to the Toyota OEM. Oil is a very light brown when I do my annual oil changes; always in the neighborhood of 10K, sometimes a bit over. I'm averaging around 130mpg; since I'm about 70% EV. This car and engine doesn't seem to turn my oil coffee brown; like my other cars. My old diesel turned the oil black/brown within 50 miles of changing it.
     
  6. Georgina Rudkus

    Georgina Rudkus Senior Member

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    If you buy Toyota OE grade off of Amazon, make sure that it sold through a Toyota dealer.

    I also use a Walmart branded Super Tech spin on, since I have the spin on conversion. It is made in USA and is high quality.

    A more restrictive oil flow may cause overheating or starvation of the variable valve timing system, which becomes worse with sludge if the oil is left too long in the engine.

    More important than the brand of oil filter is a frequent oil change to remove detritus, contamination and sludge.
     
  7. pasadena_commut

    pasadena_commut Senior Member

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    Unclear to me exactly how they did the particle capture testing. It cannot have run endlessly because even a filter with a terrible capture percentage at a give size, let's say 20%, would eventually clear all the particles (.8 x .8 x .8 .... eventually approaches zero). So presumably they forced all the fluid through N times, where N is small and might be 1. I counted 5 on the video running in the background for some of them, but they didn't say there were not more they didn't show. It really doesn't matter much if the filter catches a small particle in one pass or four, and maybe in the Toyota filter's case, ten or a hundred.

    I blinked and missed it the first time, and they did actually measure capacity. The Toyota number is on screen for only 2 seconds or so. The capacity of the Toyota filter was 13.4 grams, far higher than any other filter. So while it will take longer to clean up the oil, it can continue to do so for much longer than the other oil filters in this test. Slower filtering is not intrinsically required for larger capacity though, in the final table the Purolator Boss manages to both filter quickly and have a large capacity, ceding some ground on flow resistance to do so. This may be another case of Toyota optimizing for efficiency (less flow resistance, less power wasted pumping oil). It is likely a rounding error on the final mpg, but by doing this with, well, everything, they eke out slightly better mpg.

    So I revise the issue. It isn't that the Toyota filter wont clean the oil, it is that it will do so very slowly.

    Also, I despise comparison tables that reduce numeric results to a 1 to N ordering without showing the same table with the original numbers first. In far too many cases the order is nearly random, based on a bunch of very close measurements, with error bars (typically never determined, definitely never provided) that may span most of the table.