Second thoughts about K&N

[StumblingElk]

I had K&N air filters in all our vehicles that I could purchase one for - until 2 years ago when I ran my finger on the inside of the air duct between the MAF sensor and the throttle body on our 1999 Buick Century and our 1999 Silverado. The tip of my finger came up dirty and gritty. I went back to paper filters on everything!

For point on contrast similar thing happened with my chevy 1500 and it has never had a k&n. Lots of dust and particulates seemed to have gone past the filter amd were in the it tube



Also have to question if the muck you had in your inlet tube was just oil that got sucked through and had caught particulates.

I only have run reusable filters on 2 cars. One Ford filter and 1 k&n. Both mustangs. Neither car had your issue.

I will say, one filter (ford filter) was way over oiled after the dealer did some maintenance and the car ran like garbage until it was addressed.

 

[Chris142]

Take a paper towel and wipe the clean side. See how dirty it is.

 

[StumblingElk]

Take a paper towel and wipe the clean side. See how dirty it is.

I just did this yesterday on the mustang when servicing the KN filter. No dirtier than any other vehicle I own with paper filters.

 

[chemman]

For point on contrast similar thing happened with my chevy 1500 and it has never had a k&n. Lots of dust and particulates seemed to have gone past the filter amd were in the it tube



Also have to question if the muck you had in your inlet tube was just oil that got sucked through and had caught particulates.

I only have run reusable filters on 2 cars. One Ford filter and 1 k&n. Both mustangs. Neither car had your issue.

I will say, one filter (ford filter) was way over oiled after the dealer did some maintenance and the car ran like garbage until it was addressed.

Well, the muck I got off was not oily at all. Just gritty. However, the "sampling" I performed on our 1992 Olds 88, which has never had a reusable air filter on it, came out clean - no much, no grit, no oiliness.

 

[TiGeo]

I have white-gloved my intake track many times on the car with an open intake/K&N and never seen anything I'd be worried about w/r to dirt/grit/oil/etc. I believe there are photos in this post somewhere of the papertowel.

 

[MrStamper]

I have white-gloved my intake track many times on the car with an open intake/K&N and never seen anything I'd be worried about w/r to dirt/grit/oil/etc. I believe there are photos in this post somewhere of the papertowel.

It has been my observation that all the recent k&n fears en masse (from circa 2 years ago) stem from one video on YouTube by a certain farmer with a money making YouTube project.

Whereas flour was poured directly onto the filter, akin to lawndarting your car over a dune straight into a sinkhole, k&n had been fine and quite recommended for decades beforehand.

Got admit that it got me too. So I rushed to the parts store and picked up a wix filter made in Mexico and installed it as soon as possible.

Well, you only live once and the laws of entropy entail that everything breaks down and degrades over time so here I am back with my k&n and my turbo noises because you only live once and that poor driver on his iPhone ready to plow into your car doesn’t care whether you had a superior wix filter made in Mexico installed.

 

[GrumpyCat]

What I did decades ago was leave a greasy (fresh grease) fingerprint in the clean side of my airbox with a K&N filter. I did not like the grit I found in the grease 2 weeks later. Repeated test many times with the OE paper filter and was happy with the results.

 

[wemay]

I've never had a dirty intake tract, MAS being oiled issue, or bad UOA in all the years of using K&N. That's approximately 25 years.

 

[RooflessVW]

It has been my observation that all the recent k&n fears en masse (from circa 2 years ago) stem from one video on YouTube by a certain farmer with a money making YouTube project.

Whereas flour was poured directly onto the filter, akin to lawndarting your car over a dune straight into a sinkhole, k&n had been fine and quite recommended for decades beforehand.

Got admit that it got me too. So I rushed to the parts store and picked up a wix filter made in Mexico and installed it as soon as possible.

Well, you only live once and the laws of entropy entail that everything breaks down and degrades over time so here I am back with my k&n and my turbo noises because you only live once and that poor driver on his iPhone ready to plow into your car doesn’t care whether you had a superior wix filter made in Mexico installed.

The K&N "fear" has been here for a decade or more.

 

[TiGeo]

It has been my observation that all the recent k&n fears en masse (from circa 2 years ago) stem from one video on YouTube by a certain farmer with a money making YouTube project.

Whereas flour was poured directly onto the filter, akin to lawndarting your car over a dune straight into a sinkhole, k&n had been fine and quite recommended for decades beforehand.

Got admit that it got me too. So I rushed to the parts store and picked up a wix filter made in Mexico and installed it as soon as possible.

Well, you only live once and the laws of entropy entail that everything breaks down and degrades over time so here I am back with my k&n and my turbo noises because you only live once and that poor driver on his iPhone ready to plow into your car doesn’t care whether you had a superior wix filter made in Mexico installed.

BITOGers be like...

 

[TiGeo]

I've never had a dirty intake tract, MAS being oiled issue, or bad UOA in all the years of using K&N. That's approximately 25 years.

My experience as well with multiple vehicles.

 

[circuitsmith]

Have used K&N filters on several vehicles w/o any untoward effects.

And George Burns lived to 100 smoking cigars.
Does that make them a good choice for everyone?

Other than a couple high performance options, none of the car makers are using oiled gause filters.
Pretty obvious why.

 

[Passport1]

K&N/dirty=Pennzoil/waxy

Simply another automotive canard.

 

[TiGeo]

And George Burns lived to 100 smoking cigars.
Does that make them a good choice for everyone?

Other than a couple high performance options, none of the car makers are using oiled gause filters.
Pretty obvious why.

Yes, the obvious reason is....for gen pop...this isn't a good option as it requires attention/details. Your average driver never even changes their paper one. It's like most performance/enthusiast parts....for people who want more/willing to deal with them.

 

[Passport1]

And George Burns lived to 100 smoking cigars.

When George was asked what his doctor thought about that habit, he replied, "my doctor died years ago."

 

[OVERKILL]

K&N/dirty=Pennzoil/waxy

Simply another automotive canard.

Not really, efficiency testing has been formally done on the K&N, it is not a great air filter. This does not mean that it won't provide acceptable service for folks living in non-dusty environments like TiGeo though (which he and I have discussed numerous times in these exchanges).

Quoting myself:
There was a test report that used the ISO test dust, I've quoted it in the now locked thread from 2018:

Let's look at the dirt passed and time to restriction limit data.

- The duration of the test was 60 minutes and during that period, the amount of dirt passed by the Donaldson unit was 0.4g.
- The K&N passed 7g of dirt within 24 minutes and hit the restriction limit.

If we break this down to g/minute passed, a simple metric, we can perhaps gather some clearer data comparing the most efficient filter in the test, which also loaded up the slowest, and one of the least efficient.

1. Donaldson PowerCore: 0.0067g/min loading rate
2. K&N oil cotton gauze: 0.2917g/min loading rate

This means the Donaldson is 43.5x more efficient.

Ignoring the loading limit, if we just look at the performance within a 6 hour window:
1. Donaldson PowerCore: 2.4g of dirt passed
2. K&N oiled cotton gauze: 105g of dirt passed

That's a HUGE difference.

The Donaldson would have to be run for 262.5hrs; 11 DAYS to pass the same amount of dirt as the K&N, or, looked at from the other direction, the K&N passes in 8.2 minutes what it takes the Donaldson 6 hours to pass.

This is in relation to the ISO filtration test:
https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/keep-k-n-or-not.299927/page-7#post-5311731

The graphs (which have been posted on here many times):

 

[StumblingElk]

And George Burns lived to 100 smoking cigars.
Does that make them a good choice for everyone?

Other than a couple high performance options, none of the car makers are using oiled gause filters.
Pretty obvious why.

Cost and ease of ownership within the warranty period. That is why.

 

[StumblingElk]

Not really, efficiency testing has been formally done on the K&N, it is not a great air filter. This does not mean that it won't provide acceptable service for folks living in non-dusty environments like TiGeo though (which he and I have discussed numerous times in these exchanges).

Quoting myself:
There was a test report that used the ISO test dust, I've quoted it in the now locked thread from 2018:

Let's look at the dirt passed and time to restriction limit data.

- The duration of the test was 60 minutes and during that period, the amount of dirt passed by the Donaldson unit was 0.4g.
- The K&N passed 7g of dirt within 24 minutes and hit the restriction limit.

If we break this down to g/minute passed, a simple metric, we can perhaps gather some clearer data comparing the most efficient filter in the test, which also loaded up the slowest, and one of the least efficient.

1. Donaldson PowerCore: 0.0067g/min loading rate
2. K&N oil cotton gauze: 0.2917g/min loading rate

This means the Donaldson is 43.5x more efficient.

Ignoring the loading limit, if we just look at the performance within a 6 hour window:
1. Donaldson PowerCore: 2.4g of dirt passed
2. K&N oiled cotton gauze: 105g of dirt passed

That's a HUGE difference.

The Donaldson would have to be run for 262.5hrs; 11 DAYS to pass the same amount of dirt as the K&N, or, looked at from the other direction, the K&N passes in 8.2 minutes what it takes the Donaldson 6 hours to pass.

This is in relation to the ISO filtration test:
https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/keep-k-n-or-not.299927/page-7#post-5311731

The graphs (which have been posted on here many times):
View attachment 123562
View attachment 123563

Not exactly realistic driving situations. From what I remember they introduced a ridiculous amount of dirt onto the filters. 1 graph I remember seeing started at a baseline of like 96% or some such with greatly skews the data presentation.

I don't doubt the KN type filters could let in more particulates, just that the difference is minimal enough to not matter much (or at all) over the average ownership period. That said, I only use KN in the mustang and paper in my other cars due to ease of use.

 

[OVERKILL]

Not exactly realistic driving situations. From what I remember they introduced a ridiculous amount of dirt onto the filters. 1 graph I remember seeing started at a baseline of like 96% or some such with greatly skews the data presentation.

I don't doubt the KN type filters could let in more particulates, just that the difference is minimal enough to not matter much (or at all) over the average ownership period. That said, I only use KN in the mustang and paper in my other cars due to ease of use.

It's standardized test; the industry standard, ISO 5011 (as shown on the top of the graphs), which uses a standard sized dust and test protocol. Perhaps you are thinking of the Project Farm video or something?

Here are the details of the testing protocol:
https://tsapps.nist.gov/notifyus/docs/wto_country/SAU/full_text/pdf/SAU260(english).pdf

 

[StumblingElk]

It's standardized test; the industry standard, ISO 5011 (as shown on the top of the graphs), which uses a standard sized dust and test protocol. Perhaps you are thinking of the Project Farm video or something?

Here are the details of the testing protocol:
https://tsapps.nist.gov/notifyus/docs/wto_country/SAU/full_text/pdf/SAU260(english).pdf

It was the ISO 5011 test. I may be thinking of the efficiency portion that started at 96%