Originally Posted by
GNR22
Somewhere on youtube there is a guy that took apart about a half dozen filters and compared what they looked like on the inside as to how many pleats there are and how well they were constructed on the inside. I believe he had the standard napa and napa gold, a fram and a K&N. The napa standard and napa gold had like a 3 or 4 pleat difference and used a metal strip to hold the filter together where the 2 ends connected, the fram filter used less pleats and had glue holding it together and it wasn't even glued together when he took it apart, and the K&N had the most pleats and used a metal strip. I think it would be interesting to pull some of those other filters apart and see what they look like too. I thought it was ironic that the fram wasn't even put together when he disassembled it.
Honestly, this really tells you nothing about a filter. A filter can have less pleats and still have more capacity. It all comes down to the properties of the filter media, and that cannot be evaluated by the naked eye. To do that, you need to run multipass tests per the SAE standards. And as to the side seam method for the filter, all it needs to do it seal the one end pleat to the other. Glue is fine, and depending on the filter media, can make for a better seal versus the metal side clip.
My $.02, but I do speak from the experience of being an engineer at an aerospace filtration manufacturer for a couple years.
Mike