I have usually purchased genuine Land Rover oil filters for my 1999 Discovery 2 TD5, however this time I thought I would try some non genuine ones to save some money.  I bought a set of filters from a seller an Ebay that had sold a large number of these filters with no major negative feedback, so I thought that there should be no problem.  Initially everything appeared OK, the filters looked very similar to the genuine ones so I proceeded to install them in the engine.

The genuine Land Rover Discovery oil filters removed from the engine.

The non genuine replacement paper oil filter.

As I was installing the new centrifugal filter, I thought I would give it a spin with my finger.  As I did so, I noticed that the filter had a wobble as it turned.  See the video to the right, you can just see the wobble as it starts to spin.

The centrifugal oil filter housing lid.

Since the oil filter is supposed to spin at very high speed to be effective I presumed that this wobble would lower the efficiency of the filter.  Since I had already dropped the old oil out of the engine and had fitted the new paper oil filter, I decided to install the new centrifugal filter rather than put the old dirty one back in.  I emailed the Ebay seller and explained why I wasn’t happy, I also explained that I had installed the filter but would be replacing it with a genuine one as soon as I could get one.  The seller was very helpful, she claimed that she had not had any other complaints and refunded my money in full.  I quickly purchased a genuine filter, as can be seen in the photo below, next to the faulty non genuine one I removed.  I do wonder whether I happened to get a bad one or whether no one else has actually checked if these filters spin without a wobble.  Needless to say, the genuine one did not wobble.

This video shows the genuine centrifugal filter spinning as it should.