Dusty conditions and air filter replacement

[Falcon_LS]

Because of local weather conditions, I've made it a habit to blow out my air filter with compressed air every second fill up, and replace it with an OEM one at the 6,000 mile mark. I average about 410 miles to the tank and by the 820 mile mark, I can tell you there's enough dust in there to give you red eyes for a good couple of minutes!

My Montero's air filter has a hard construction, and the media is more of a combination of cotton and pretty thick paper. It is quite heavy compared to some filters as well. Toyota and Mitsubishi seem to have a favourable contract with Denso, and I was told this is a Denso filter...although I'm not quite sure how valid a claim that is.

That said, I wanted to share some photos I took back in summer 2007. This filter had about 8,000 miles at the time, and pretty much had me come up with my own 'filter care' schedule:

Just to see how much dust was caught inside, I filled a bucket with hot water and dumped the filter in over night, before I considered discarding it. The bucket's capacity was about 10L (3 US gallons) and when I looked at it in the morning, I remember looking at thick mud. It was that point on that I decided the recommended 16,000 mile replacement interval was ludicrous and implemented my own. That said, if anybody has any recommendations or suggestions, I would love to hear them! Thanks!

 

[Nyquist]

I do something similar with my fiance's Cobalt, but I go every 10k miles because of dust. I also shorten the OCI's because of all the dust.

 

[HTSS_TR]

AFE Pro-Dry S is washable/reusable filter, unfortunately they only make filter for Mitsubishi Montero for model years 1989-1991.

If it is so dusty in your area, you may want to clean your air filter every fill up by tapping it lightly on hard surface, then vacuum on dirty side and last step blow air on clean side. One trick you may want to consider: use discarded pentyhose as pre-filter by insert pentyhose at the opening of the filter box to catch sand and debris.

Where I live, my air filter does not look that bad after 30k miles.

 

[Audi Junkie]

I'd wrap the new filter in panty hose, discarding them and vacuuming the element out at the halfway mark. Be carefull with all that airbox disassembly and dirty filter handling. A lot of dirt gets loosened and flies into the system on restart. I'd clean the filter once in it's life, as I described and run it until you detect a flow problem.

 

[Smokescreen]

Wow. I don't think any of my filters got that much accumulation in over 150,000kms per car. I still changed them out at the 5 year mark, just to be safe....