I doubt it. I've been at several industrial engine manufacturing facilities and haven't seen this done before. There's generally plenty of assembly lube to take care of everything before the oil starts flowing.

I've never pre-filled an oil filter and usually run my vehicles to 185-250,000 miles with no engine problems.

 

If pre-filing was necessary there would be no horizontal or upside down oil filters.

 

 

 

I'm fully convinced it's a waste of time.

 

my walker mower Kohler motor filter calls for it to be pre filled...even though its a horizontal mount. so thats a nice mess every time. lol. So then i did the same on the f150, also horizontal but a stupid tight fit, another huge mess. i shouldn't play mechanic anymore.

 

I'm in agreement with everyone else. I doubt Ford does. Do I? Only if the filter is vertical and right side up. As is the case with many vehicles, how the hell do they expect you to prefill a filter when it attaches horizontally to the side of the engine?

 

Pretty obvious.. simply lift up the far side so the filter gets installed vertical

 

You can also consider that any oil you pour into the filter will not be filtered before circulating through your engine...

Why New Oil Should be Filtered

 

 

some toyota filters are upside down and they seem to make it a few hundred thousand miles. which reminds me, upside down makes more mess when changing and it was a stupid idea on toyotas part

 

Well if I had to wager, the engines leave the factory dry because they aren't hot running the engines. It also would make for easier paperwork to not have to classify all that oil on shipping manifests when they import the engines to the USA from Mexico.

 

The wife's Mercedes filter is upside down. I'd love to watch someone pre-fill it. When first loosened it let's a drain valve open so that there's no mess.

 

Same here, been prefilling filters my whole life. Probably a waste of time, but makes sense to me. On the other hand, upside down filters never made sense to me, but what do I know? Just an old school, common sense Conservative.