Which Air Filter To Choose?
Controversy erupts again over points like “does the K&N filter’s oil foul MAFs?” and “does the K&N do a better or worse job of filtering particles?” This Volvo forum topic has anecdotal and links to laboratory evidence supporting both sides. What do you think?
JDS60R »
I generally see 5hp at the wheels of an S60R.
It allows easier filling of the cylinders so it lowers the draw of oil from behind the valves and rings.
Take a K&N for your car and a stock filter and try and blow air through them. It will be very clear that the restriction is significantly less.
Yes, I too would love to see a perfectly clean filter paper post driving but you can see that all of them let quite a bit of dust through.
The significant details of drying the filter, weighing it, extracting the dust and sorting it by soze is missing.
If you combustion environment is not effected by wear of anything less 20 microns you can judge which filter is better.
If you had the choice of better flow ( acceleration times of turbo motors are definetly increase with a filter that can match its flow rate) and no damage to your motor it would be an easy choice.
Unfortunately no one has performed this test yet.
I think the K&N example of a million mile truck helps to illustrate the benefits of the filter.
By the way – don’t clean you K&N . You can vaccum the fuzzy’s off if you see a decrease in mileage. The K&N filtration performance increases significantly once dirty. This is a planned benefit of the filter and cleaning it actually lowers the filtration efficiency.
When I fixed motorcycles for a living we did a post filter test on a dirty and new K&N vs the oem and paper filter replacements. The results were similar to this test with the new K&N having just a bit more pass through.
The dirty K&N ( with a layer of fuzz on the outside) did a far better job than the paper filters.
I was a strong disbeliever in K&N until I spoke with one of their engineers and he advised me of letting the filter get dirty and then testing it. He was right.
I just sold my 1999 Taurus 24 valve (stop laughing) to my friend. It has 100K miles on a K&N that I put in 60 Days after I bought it new (had 7 miles on it) and it has never dropped down in mileage. I’m just saying – try not to clean them so much – they really don’t need it and will filter better with some fuzz.
I am just sharing experiences here. Please perform your own tests and draw your own conclusions.
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K&N or Paper/OEM Air Filter?
Last Updated on August 13, 2020
