Bert is right.
Whatever you heard it's more than likely wrong! Lol
This crap about once you go to synthetic you can never go back it's just that crap..
People say similar things about never switching brands of oil also which is also crap and just made up Hocus pocus that someone believed in their own mind and said it enough times and enough people believed it and then of course enter the internet so they could tell more people and now it's become kind of an urban legend but it's still a legend.
Now back to oil filters: I guess you should do whatever makes you sleep better at night as people have been doing this with their automobiles making sure they buy an AC Delco for a GM or a motorcraft for a Ford for decades because it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy but in reality unless you're getting them for the same price or cheaper you're just wasting money.. except for most frams or the orange fram standard ones, I won't even put those on a lawn mower!
I wouldn't put one of those on a bicycle and they don't even have oil or oil filters.
No manufacturer makes their own oil filters anyways as they're always made by someone for them and over the years they change manufacturers too and there have been proven differences in quality among the same brand and part numbers of certain filters over the years.
Point being, hardly anyone makes a better filter than Wix so you just can't go wrong with one of those and thinking that replacing a wix with a kohler, Briggs & stratton, Kawasaki or other engine brand filter is just silly and probably counterproductive.
Secondly, it's a lawn mower engine.
All the stuff that Bert said is true.
It's not like a car and these engines lasted 30 and 40 years under hard use before they ever had an oil filter on them AND let's not forget the old oils they were using which some people never pass up the chance to tell you how old are superior and advanced nowadays but we can certainly argue about that too.
Thirdly, of all the problems people have with lawn mowers , failures, engine failures etc basically you can look at every number and every box that's checked and you can find out that pretty much none of them are because of the oil filter or the brand, type of oil synthetic versus dimensional, or even the weight of oil.
Any boxes or numbers you would see in the failures attributed to that but probably just be sloppiness or air from the people who entered them because in the real world none of these things make much difference.
What DOES matter is having enough oil in it and not having any leaks bad enough to lower the level too dangerous levels.
So as long as the oil filter is it damaged, installed improperly, leaking around the gasket due to an old gasket being stuck on there or not being the proper size so it can't seal completely and as long as there's some sort of automotive oil in the crankcase whether it be SAE 30, SAE 40, 15w40, 5w40, 10w30, 10w40, 20 w 50 or several others even and as long as it's at a safe level on the dipstick THEN it really makes little difference.
People can pull themselves and convince themselves all they want but this is how it plays out in the real world.
People bring me lawn mowers that are well over 20 years old that probably haven't had the oil changed and at least 18 of those years. Maybe, just maybe they changed it once or twice in the first 3 years some don't even get that..
All they have had done is topped off for the entire life of the mower.
The oil is about as black as you can get, it's thicker than it should be but guess what.... The engine still run fine and they still have tons of life left in them.
On the other hand I get a handful of mowers in every year most of which are relatively new and under 4 years old that are completely locked up because the owner bought it new and never checked the oil since the day they put it into service.
So in the real world it's not about brand a filter or oil or the frequency of changes or the cleanliness etc but rather the presence of enough oil or basically the amount.
I use a 51348 on every briggs, kohler, Chinese/Lincoln etc as they might be a little longer but pretty much fit on everything except a few of the r1000s or rear engine rider Troy-Bilt and Craftsman because they can hit due to the mounting of the engine.
There are several different part numbers that are basically the same filter just different links but the 51348 is the most common all around one that fits pretty much everything but Kawasaki.
Those typically get a 51394.
