I've heard bad things about Fram's as well, and had some trouble finding another filter. Napa auto parts carries a "gold" type filter for my 02, and I'm going to assume it's the same application on a 1.8. I've never had any trouble with napa parts, foriegn or domestic, and they're nice guys, so I did it. Put 1000 or so miles on the thing, and the oil's still pretty clean, sooo...I guess it's filtering oil. Just my "02" cents. -alan 79 320i 74 02