Megatron

I'm all confused about Honda oil filters and hope someone can straighten it all out for me. I have a 2001 CL-S and now have an 2003 Accord Coupe V6 as well.

My confusion is that apparently, Honda has gone to a new smaller oil filter on the new Accord V6s (I assume that is what will be used on the new TLs as well). I have a big stock of OEM oil filters for my CL and the oil filter wrench as well, and now I have to buy new filters for the Accord and a new wrench!

The confusion though is that the Honda dealers tell me that the two are interchangeable! Supposedly, we can use the new smaller filter on the 98-2002 Accord V6s as well as the TL and CL V6s. And then they tell me that I can use the old bigger filter on the 2003 Accord V6s also. What the heck? I'm confused!

Do you guys think this is really true? According to the Honda dealers, Honda and Acura are phasing out the bigger filters and replacing them with the smaller ones. So in the future, we'll all be using the smaller filters if we go OEM. Does this make sense?

I hope someone can shed the light on this for me. Thanks!

mushutofu

Rather than looking at the filter size look at the filter diameter in terms of the thread. My TL-s honda oil filter was pretty big. But when I bought a new oil filter I bought the Fram filter and overall the oil filter was smaller but it still fit.
Hope this helps.

Megatron

Thanks for the info... and yes, the actual contact area is the same. The o-ring is the same size and the threads are the same, so both filters are interchangeable in the sense that they fit the same opening.

I'm just wondering if having a smaller filter on my car would affect things like filtering life, filtering effectivness, etc... Seems like a smaller filter is bad... less filtering area right?

mushutofu

I agree but I do oil changes every 3K miles instead of the 7K honda recommends. So I really don't think it will make that big of a difference.

AcuraTLSFan

Megatron,

Honda likes to use their universal oil fiters that basically fit on everycar. Way to cut down on production cost. There are some ad/disvantages of having big or small filter. Bigger is not always better. it just depends on how many pleads are in the filter and who the filter material is made out of. Smaller filters can have a larger filter area than a larger filter. I think the smaller filter they are using is the one found on the RSX and Civic-Si. From what i read and been told, smaller filter can cause less flucuation in oil pressure.

Mushutofu

Honda recommends 7k for normal driving, and 3k for sevre driving. Most of us fall under sever drving.