Re: Long or Short Oil filter???
There are some advantages to using a longer filter, but the shorter filter specified for your engine is more than up to the task.
The longer filter will have more filter surface area, so for a given pressure and volume of oil, it will create less resistance to flow. The greater surface area also holds more dirt, and due to the larger "can" it will hold more oil (perhaps 1/4 to 1/3 quart additional). All of these things would help you go further between oil changes in a car or truck, and help contribute to less engine wear, but in a recreational-use boat it would be difficult to determine if it provided an advantage. For a commerical fisherman or crabber whose boat is in use everyday, I would recommended it- but if you saw the size of the filters on commercal-use engines, you might be surprised- they are generally far bigger than what is on your personal use car/truck/boat. These advantages hold true for gas and diesel.
It is important to make sure that whatever filter you use, that it has the same internal specifictions, such as thread size, pressure relief valve and flow capacity. This is easy for most GM based marine engines using the small-block or big-block engines. Purolator and Amsoil have online cross references, as well as other companies.
