Oil/fuel/water seperator filters on amazon counterfeit?

Not really online. Once you have them in hand there are things like too crisp lines or too blurry lettering, misspelled words, fake or slightly off stamps, wrong type of crimp, wrong weight and more ect. Though a lot of fakes look basically exactly like OEM especially if they are made overseas. And even opening them up can look "correct" even though they use entirely the wrong internal filters. Sometimes they can include pictures that make it obvious, sometimes they use stock photos that dont.

Honestly when it comes to filters just get them from a trusted source like a dealer or napa or the like. The risk is just way too much for such a minor savings.

 

Fleetguard has also been sending some junk over from India instead of USA/Mexico built stuff, ran around a hard start issue for weeks before figuring it out,

 

They may be counterfeit, or they may be stolen. Either way, I wouldn't accept that kind of risk for my business.

 

The $60k question is do you think its worth taking the risk to save $150?

 

We had a lot of FG filters turn out to be grade b or less filters. One of my sources was a dealer in Ohio, and the filters were made by a third party in China without any QA controls (no spot checks, etc. ...). I have one sitting on my desk that is a perfect knock off, there is one slight flaw to the filter case, which shows that it isn't a real one but a knock off.

 

Good info on fakes:

Fleetguard | Counterfeit Awareness

Fleetgeurd...

 

Just got taken for a ride on my cat oil filters through an Amazon seller, the first couple I pulled out of the pack looked legit, the one I just had to use today on an oil change is not even printed as a cat filter, ordered my regular filters through my regular supplier and will be changing this one out on Monday and going back to who I know for my filters