Made In The USA: Mobil 1 Motorcycle Oil Filter

I have to say that this one surprised me, particularly since the packaging said "See item for country of origin" which is usually a nice way of saying "HEY! THERE'S A THREE PERCENT CHANCE THIS WASN'T MADE IN CHINA! BUT YOU'LL HAVE TO BUY IT TO FIND OUT!"

But as we'll see, oil filters make for strange bedfellows.

As far as I could tell, Mobil 1 oil filters are made by Champion, a massive multinational corporation that focuses on oil filtration. There's no guarantee that your Mobil-1-branded filter will be made in the United States, as Champion has plants in Asia. With that said, the Internet seems to think that the vast majority of the filters are, indeed, made here.

Here's the interesting part: Lotus tuners/fabricators BOE did a teardown on Lotus oil filters and found that the Mobil 1 filter was identical to the K&N filter. Is that the case in all situations? I wonder. The K&N filter for the Honda CB1100 is suspiciously similar to the Mobil 1 filter I just bought, differing visually only in the traditional twist nut molded into the body for easy removal.

One more surprise: Since I own the plain-Jane CB1100 Standard, I never thought to see if the twin-exhaust, polished-motor CB1100 Deluxe had a different oil filter. Turns out that it does! There's a chrome K&N filter without external markings that you can buy for the Deluxe. It would fit on my Standard, of course, but it would look ridiculous. On the other hand, as they always say, "If it don't go... chrome it!"