If you cut the top of the filter open you will see that the filters are filled with cotton waste, bugs, twigs, saw dust and other floor sweepings from the cotton ginning mills. (atleast they used to be like this)

Only the mercedes benz filters actually have clean media in them, the turkish sourced fram filters with these construction also had clean cotton string media - Some Iranian, Pakistani and Indian oil filters also had the same clean cotton string media in these mercedes oil filters but none were or are sold in USA.

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2012 BMW X5 (Beef + Granite suspension model)

1995 E300D - The original humming machine (consumed by Flood 2017)
2000 E320 - The evolution (consumed by flood 2017)