Engine Dirt: Oil Filter vs Air Filter

[digitaldrifter91]

hehe gee..im a believer that the air filter should catch more dirt and not let it by. i think that even though more power is produced with high flow filters, the power will dimminish later when dirt appears in their engine. though i like k & n but i dont wish to use it...

i would sacrafice air flow for clean air. but with this in mind many people has had good, and bad experiances with k & n filters. some experiance no dirt, some experiance alot..

if dirt gets in the engine, i have no idea how to get it out...i know that fram lets a little dirt go by and i just hope that my oil filter catches it (bosch).

im undecided on bypass..i have a honda

i used to use fram/fram. fram filter and oil filter. i watned to start using k & n but with research i found that it doesnt get everything all the time...now i use a fram filter and a bosch oil filter...i wanted to use a mobil 1 oil filter but it costs more. bosch is in the 15 micron area with a pretty good multi pass efficiency..mobil 1 is more though...i like the bosch cause now my engine is a little quieter. the fram will hold mostly all the dirt and i know wont really harm my engine. since my car is not a race car i dont care about HP...i rather have the car last longer than go faster. boshc...6 bucks for a better filter than fram. syntetic media inside is co for me. but i might go mobil 1 for a while becuase i am trying to rid my engien of this additive that had alot of solids in it...hope i helped u a bit on my personal experiance..

do u think i am right in my decisions..if not then please share it with me

 

[Eiron]

I've been thinking about this for the past few weeks, & since the "Pure One Myth" thread seems to be alluding to it, I thought I'd throw this out.

There've been discussions here of how cotton gauze type air filters allow more dirt to get into the engine. Some folks agree & won't use them, while others think they're fine. Now we're discussing similar points with oil filters. I started thinking about flowing more air versus flowing more oil, & how dirt figures into the decision-making process.

In any air filter, the dirtier it gets, the less air it flows. Since there's no bypass, the only way you can get around this is to use a lower restriction filter. This is where the arguments about efficiency start, right? In an oil filter, the dirtier it gets, the more it goes into bypass. You're not getting less oil with a dirty filter, like you are less air with a dirty air filter. So, if the oil filter's doing a better job of cleaning the oil, does it matter if it's in bypass more frequently?

With this in mind, here's what I'd like to ask people:
1) How important do you feel it is to reduce dirt ingestion into the engine?
2) Are you willing to sacrifice airflow to increase cleanliness?
3) Once the dirt is in the engine, how important do you feel it is to remove it from circulation?
4) Are you willing to go into bypass more frequently to increase cleanliness?
5) Which combination of air & oil filters are you most comfortable using?
6) What is your reasoning for running your combination of filters?

I know these questions sort of overlap. I'm also sure there are gaps in my logic, so please let me know where it could be improved with more knowledge & experience.

Thanks guys.

 

[Eiron]

dd91,
I don't know if any combination's right or wrong. I'm just trying to find out what other people think. I can tell you what I'm doing, & why. I've got K&N air filters on both of my cars, & I prefer to run Pure One oil filters.

Starting with the air filter choice, a big reason why I chose to go with K&N is cost. The first car I ever put a K&N in had an expensive air filter ($15) & the K&N at $45 made more sense since I was planning on keeping the car for a while. Not throwing out air filters was the next big feature for me. Any "performance" benefits were incidental, but welcome. At the time, keeping more or less dirt out of the engine wasn't even a concern, as I felt the K&N was at least equal to paper. (I now realize I may be wrong, but I'm not concerned enough to change.) (Yet.)

As for the oil filter, my only criteria are flow & dirt capturing. Unfortunately, I'm stuck relying on marketing info for these points. I noticed several years ago that the Pure One filters compared favorably against others on the UltraGuard Gold website. My feeling is that ACDelco has nothing to gain by falsely representing the competitive standings of filters which don't do as well as their own. Actually, I am also concerned with dirt holding capacity, as I don't really want to change filters 1/2 way through my run of oil. I've gone to the next size larger filter with the same bypass setting, which should both improve flow & increase the amount of filtering media (which increases dirt capacity). I'd also rather have the oil filter pull more dirt out of the oil & go into bypass, than leave more dirt in the oil to avoid going into bypass.

So, my combination favors low overall cost & waste by using long-life products. As basic as it seems, I'd never linked the dirt coming into the engine with the dirt circulating in the oil until I stumbled across this site. If I'm letting more dirt in with the air, I hope to remove it from the oil.

 

[RalphPWood]

I use the cotton gauze air cleaner on my old 6.9 Ford diesel. It runs a lot better. I know it doesn't clean air as well as some of the others. Most of the dirt doesn't get into the lube oil. It wears the rings, cylinders and valve stems then blows out the exhaust.
If you hold a filter up to the light you can pretty much tell how well it cleans air. I wouldn't take anything off road with an air cleaner I can read a book thru.
Filters are not very complicated. The better they clean the more restrictive they are. Ideal for me would be a big foam rubber filter such as Amsoil. I might consider a hood scoop and a larger filter with a thicker filter media. I have a few on equipment at work that I might be able to squeeze under the hood. A grease monkey like me can do about anything.

Ralph

 

[digitaldrifter91]

quote:

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Originally posted by Greg Netzner:
dd91,
I don't know if any combination's right or wrong. I'm just trying to find out what other people think. I can tell you what I'm doing, & why. I've got K&N air filters on both of my cars, & I prefer to run Pure One oil filters.

Starting with the air filter choice, a big reason why I chose to go with K&N is cost. The first car I ever put a K&N in had an expensive air filter ($15) & the K&N at $45 made more sense since I was planning on keeping the car for a while. Not throwing out air filters was the next big feature for me. Any "performance" benefits were incidental, but welcome. At the time, keeping more or less dirt out of the engine wasn't even a concern, as I felt the K&N was at least equal to paper. (I now realize I may be wrong, but I'm not concerned enough to change.) (Yet.)

As for the oil filter, my only criteria are flow & dirt capturing. Unfortunately, I'm stuck relying on marketing info for these points. I noticed several years ago that the Pure One filters compared favorably against others on the UltraGuard Gold website. My feeling is that ACDelco has nothing to gain by falsely representing the competitive standings of filters which don't do as well as their own. Actually, I am also concerned with dirt holding capacity, as I don't really want to change filters 1/2 way through my run of oil. I've gone to the next size larger filter with the same bypass setting, which should both improve flow & increase the amount of filtering media (which increases dirt capacity). I'd also rather have the oil filter pull more dirt out of the oil & go into bypass, than leave more dirt in the oil to avoid going into bypass.

So, my combination favors low overall cost & waste by using long-life products. As basic as it seems, I'd never linked the dirt coming into the engine with the dirt circulating in the oil until I stumbled across this site. If I'm letting more dirt in with the air, I hope to remove it from the oil.

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hehe i just wanted to hear ur thoughts...i watned to go k & n but i didnt like the huge flow of oil...more flow=less filtration i think...its pretty standard though...so bosch and mobil 1 is co with me. i dont think that oil flow needs to be really high for my car, im not running a high performance system, only a standard 4cyl 2.2L. hehe if i can find pure one ill go for that though...as for the filter..still searching...havent found one...but as the last person said, more flow is less filtration...really there is no way around this...ill probably use a k & n for racing only, heh at the track basically trying to get my 1/4 mile times in....but if someone gives me 40 bucks ill buy a k & n and check it once a week to see if there dirt comming in the engine..if not after a month or 2 i dont see any then ill just go k & n...u kinda get where im going?

 

[digitaldrifter91]

humm mine costs 6 bucks...

 

[satterfi]

I prefer OEM air filters and M1 oil filters.

I think you should use the highest quality filters available. I don't trust $2 filters because I believe somewhere you have to cut costs to sell at that price. I suspect quality control is the first corner that's cut with a cheap filter.

 

[Sciguyjim]

Greg,

Be afraid, be VERY afraid. (I've always wanted to use that line somewhere.) I've wondered the same things and I once asked a similar question on another forum (before I found out about this one) and I was literally laughed off it, by the moderator no less! To some people, max airflow is all that matters, they practically ignore the fact that dirt is getting into the engine with the air even though they talk about filtering it out of the oil.

I've done as much comparative research as I can online for gauze vs foam vs paper, and found less info than I'd hoped for. I even made my own type of air filter which seems to me to be better, in general, than all of the above but I have no way to do any actual comparisons. Professional air filter tests are extremely expensive, like $700+ each.

What I (and others) have decided is that the gauze and foam filters seem to be best suited for areas with large sized pieces of dirt. They are not recommended for regular in town driving where the air quality is better and the general dust size is much finer (I'm paraphrasing from things I've read). Therefore, I've decided to stay with the standard paper filter. I don't race so I don't need massive amounts of airflow. (I like my homemade design, but I have no idea if it is doing a good job or not. Even though I think it is, I don't want to take chances and I get scared every time I go through a cloud of dust from all the roadwork here in the summer.)

To answer your questions,
1. I think it is important to reduce dirt ingestion as much as possible.
2. Yes, up to a point. In some of my experiments, I ended up reducing airflow too much and could feel a lack of response and power so I had to remove filter media to increase the airflow through my filter. I had to compromise and find a point where it seemed that airflow was high but so was filtering ability.
3. This is important to me too. I use Mobil 1 oil filters and a bunch of magnets currently.
4. I'm unsure about this.
5. My air filters are regular AC or Fram. I don't know which brand of paper is best.
6. See everything above.