Those are probably words of wisdom.... if you care about your car and want to make it last, why do the "bare minimum?" Like you said, $20 every 5000 miles (with a full synthetic) is pretty cheap insurance to keep the motor clean and happy.

And apologies about correcting your post after you had already edited it!

Even clean engines make the oil black. But that'* good, that means it'* cleaning and not building up.

Do you trust even a top brand filter to last those kinda miles?

I swap out my Mobil every 5k or so, with a filter like Wix/Napa Gold, AC Delco, etc.

My point exactly. Now, I run a little longer than 5k in my Bonneville, but I always use a quality filter.

The main reason to change your filter often is because engines are dirty. When a filter starts to get plugged up with debri and contaminants, sooner or later, it will plug up to a degree that it will start to bypass the filter entirely! And that is NOT good at all!

Among Wix/Napa Gold & AC Delco are the Purolator or Pure One filters as well as the Mobil 1 filters. There are a few other quality filters out there, but those are the highest ranking in all the tests that I have seen.