HI All, hoping someone can shed some light on this.
I purchased a 2008 Ram 1500 Laramie 4x4 5.7 with 98K earlier this year, and so far love the truck, but something happened last night that has me scratching my head and try as I might, here and elsewhere, I can't find any information on what is going on.
The oil indicator light has been on for a few days so I decided to do an oil change yesterday after work. I've had one oil change done prior while the truck was in the shop for some other work.
So I stopped at Walmart and bought a MO-899 filter (based on the cross-reference thing at Walmart) and 5W-20 oil.
When I removed the old filter, which I assume is the one my mechanic put on, I realized it was very different (smaller in diameter) from the one I purchased. The old filter was a service pro M195. Thinking I had bought the wrong filter, I took both to AutoZone and had the counter guy look up the correct filter. As I'm sure you all know, MO-899 is the correct filter - just not for my truck. There is no way that an MO-899 would fit on my truck. So, I ended up buying and installing a Purolater L20195 which cross references with the one I took off the truck.

So, does anyone have any clue what is going on here? Did someone possibly install a different oil filter plate at some point for some reason?

Thanks for any help I can get with this. The truck runs great, I'm just trying to figure out what's going on.

 

So long as the threads are the same, and the seal is the same diameter, there are probably a fair few filters that will fit, and they won't all be the same size. Same engine goes into a lot of different applications, and they won't all necessarily use the same filter. Still and all, the 'wrong' filter will still fit just fine, and do the job.

Does the 'correct' filter thread on, and seal up good?

 

No, the correct filter does not thread on. The size of the seal and ID of the threads is different. Should have clarified that.

 

Is the filter housing separate from the timing cover, or whatever it mounts to?

Wonder if it had an engine swap at some point in the past.....

 

I'll have to look. The truck runs great and doesn't seem bothered by this at all. I'm just trying to figure out how this happened.

 

Interesting dilemma. Do you happen to have photos of the filter plate location and maybe the the filters side by side? This is indeed pretty strange.