Air Filter recommendation request
 

Looking for a recommendation on a 14" air filter, current one is 3" height on a recessed air cleaner base

Dedicated drag car
65 GTO with 68 400
Holley 750 DP, Torker II intake + Wilson 1" spacer

Do you have enough hood clearance to stack another 1 or 2” fourteen inch on top of your 3”?
That the best way to go.

I'm not sure, will have to do some checking.

I like that idea, if so, any recommendation on a brand?

By the way, Happy New Year!

DV

K&N for the win!

Instead of stacking another filter... just buy a 4" if it will fit under the hood. K&N sells 14x4" so do other brands of traditional paper filters, Ive read that the paper filters flow just as good when new as the k&n when dirty but havent seen any real proof of that.

78w72 - thats what I am planning on doing if a 4" will fit, time to go shopping for some play dough

Like you said it would be interesting to see if the K&N is worth it.

gtokid1968 - any data to backup your vote for K&N vs. a paper filter?

A ball of aluminum foil works great to check hood clearance...

K&N are nice since they are washable & will last a long time, but paper works good too & is much cheaper priced. Summit & a couple others have their own brand of washable filters too priced less than K&N.

My only data is from K&N
I have the extreme top as well. on my good car.
That means the top part {lid} has filter in it as well so it's like twice as much filter aera.
I plan on stacking another one on top of the 4'' that I have and will be running on the project car once I get the engine in and the hood on to measure it for height.
I will use the ball of aluminum foil as well

Nice trick - aluminum foil - I always used the playdough and fought it - Thanks!

Aluminum foil idea worked well (thanks again 78w72), I have an additional 1.5" of clearance so I will be giving a 4" filter a try, just need to figure out type & brand...

k&n lets to much dirt in, and i don't want there oil in my motor, a clean paper is good i use the (Allstar Performance ALL26020) and remember paper filters saved the world four yeas ago

yep!

Engine Masters did an air filter comparison, look it up on YouTube.

I recently learned a little bit on that subject with our last dyno session a few months back. The shop I used builds roundy round engines mainly so he's used to dirt. I kind of figured he would be a big "cleanable" filter guy, lol.

When I showed up with a brand new 14x4" K&N he immediately said he constantly sees gains on his dyno with a basic paper filter. Perfect, lets try it on this engine. Sure enough it was worth 3 hp with the same size paper filter. Also found out the nice curved bottom GM drop bases are worth a pinch over the cheap blocky looking drop bases that come with basic air cleaners. I guess it helps the air turn.
On top of that the nice rounded curved lids also are worth a little bit. They also have a unique looking shape by the stud, countersinks the wing nut for lack of a better description, that if you look at it from the bottom you can imagine how it helps direct air into the carb. By the time we nit picked air cleaner setups I found almost 10 hp. Of course you see those lids all the time on roundy round engines and he had one handy. I quickly ordered one when we got back home, lol.

Rubbish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iX9PIW4nqI&t=866s

And if you think paper saved the world I have a bridge to sell you.

As long as I have run dirt track cars, I have never used K&N filters, always paper. If you want something that actually removes fine particulate from the ingested air, it ain't a K&N or any other gauze filter.

A friend of mine was running a super late model in the mid 90s and tried running a K&N on his car. He followed the instructions to the T and he was still going through rings prematurely. One week he smeared chassis grease on the air cleaner base, and lid to see if there was dust passing through the filter element. After 2 nights of racing you could visibly see the dust that was embedded in the chassis grease inside of the assembly, that was the end of the K&N filter for him.

This is known as dusting, and is a fact that gauze filters allow more microscopic dirt inside of the engine.

K&N was big with dirt track guys when they came out in the 90s, they are not in favor after the car owners that prematurely wore out their engines from the dirt that passes through them. Chasing 5 more HP by running a gauze filter, while spending more money on engine maintenance is false economy.

I worked on construction equipment for 15 years, you'll never ever see any of it with gauze filters, always paper. You will see a double element with a large outer filter, and a finer inner filter so you have 2 stage filtering, both paper elements.

Remember all the microscopic dirt that enters through the intake air finds it way into the oil eventually, and the microscopic dirt is what wears out engine parts. I'll never use any gauze air filter on anything I want to keep running over time.

As much as I want my oil filtered to a very high standard, I'm never going to compromise filtering the air entering the intake tract.

:2cents:

Thanks to all for the info and opinions!

Probably going to go with a paper 14x4.

Formulajones - I would be curious to see what your base & top look like for future reference

DV

I know the circle track Late Model car I had had a 14x4" PAPER on it. I have a 14x4" on my IA but it does cost me HP on the 500" motor over no filter

The flipped lid stock dual snorkel Mopar housing with a paper filter lost 11-12 HP over no filter, on a 750 HP BBC per Engine Masters test. I'll take the superior filtering of the paper over 5 HP gain with gauze when you're talking tenths of a percent gain.

Their deduction was that the direction the air entered the carb was more beneficial than what the filter media was made from. Velocity stacks were the best results. They even used a stainless steel salad bowl with just the lid style element, and it performed almost as well as no air cleaner. The air turn from horizontal, to vertical, was more restrictive than what media the element was made from.

A filtered lid combined with a conventional element didn't do well either, you'd think more surface area would be beneficial, but the engine wanted one or the other, but not both together..........:noidea:

This is the style most dirt track cars run:

https://i.ibb.co/2vjTnxd/ALL26094-39850-air-filter.jpg

Smooth contours in the base and lid to turn the air into the carb throat.

Link to Allstar:

https://allstarperformance.com/air-c...acer-all26094/

Paper has its place, so does a K&N.
I do know a K&N is not going to hurt your engine in any way. I ran one on my old 455 since the early 90s and the engine was beat on until 2019. Well over 1000 passes and it ran its fastest right before I shut it down so the bores-rings were not hurt.
Way back I had one of those garbage triangle air cleaners because it way laying around from my brothers old high school ride and I had hood clearance issues. One day I bought a K&N stack and pulled the hood off. The car gained 7 tenths.
Industrial stuff, no one is going to take the time to clean a gauze filter. Company buy the filters and pre filters and you throw them on.
My wife used to run my Tundra at the track. The day I put a K&N filter it slowed down a bit. Not sure if it was due to any flow issues or the computer getting weirded out from the new style filter. Put a Denso OEM back on.

Yeah that's what we experimented with on the dyno recently. Only difference is I used a factory gm base which is curved nicely much like your picture and not blocky like the aftermarket stuff. Then played with lids. The one in your pic worked the best.

Thanks for the pic and link.

DV

In the test, the triangular filter lost about 10%, like 72 HP almost anything is better than one of those. The flipped lid stock MOPAR with a 3 inch paper filter lost 11 HP. The tapered velocity stack design has way more effect at reducing restriction than the media does. The smooth transition into the carb picks up more HP than any media change did.

You really need to watch the dyno test again, instead of calling BS on it.

Mass airflow (MAF) sensors notoriously don't like gauze filters because the oil that gets pulled into them skews the readings going to the computer.

Many chain saws use gauze filters, open one up sometime and see how much sawdust makes it's way into the intake tract.

If you want clean air on a street driven car I would surely avoid a K&N, if you're only drag racing it and air filtration is secondary to performance then I guess you want the K&N, or just delete the filter entirely.

In testing the K&N with flour as a controlled particulate it let in just under 3000 particles, where the conventional Purolator and WIX were under 200 particles. Pick your poison, but I'll never run a gauze filter on anything I want to last.

I did not call BS on any test or video. Never watched it. Just gave my own experiences.
I live in Humboldt County CA. Chainsaw country as it gets. Not unusual for our loggers to have 5'+ chainsaw bars. Some of them are like starting a Volkswagen. Cleaned many chainsaws and sawdust gets past them all. Most seem to be fine plastic screens, Huskys anyway. My preferred brand.

I've been running paper filters in my drop base air cleaner. Fram CA3492 or NAPA 22096

If you need a click more room the Chevy L-88 style is a full 2" drop. Same one on mid 60s SB Corvette base. What I have on the IA 500" unless racing.

Yeah I used the L88 drop base when I made the cold air box setup on dad's GTO years ago. The nice thing about those GM pieces is they are curved and shaped nicely to help direct air flow, much like all OEM bases were made like cowl induction air cleaners, and even the open elements used in the 60's all have a better base, and all come already equipped with a fixed crank case tube as well so you don't have to cobble that crap together either.

I try to run those style bases on all the cars I can because they've always made more power on the dyno.

Link to Engine Masters air filter shootout season 2 episode 27:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x693421

14 minutes.

Project Farm does a test where in his clear test rig you can see the particulate going right through the K&N filter as he introduces it into the air stream. There's no free lunch, the low restriction of a gauze filter does not filter out fine particulate. He did 0-60 tests, the K&N won by .1 seconds over the best performing OEM paper filter.

If you care to look for testing there is plenty of it out there, the gauze filters never equal OEM style filters in particulate removal. In fact they test much worse in oil analysis tests due to solids passed into the oil than OEM style filters test. When the oil analysis shows much more solids passed into the oil with a gauze filter in multiple tests over a OEM style filter. I don't want one on anything I care about. Your engine, and your choice.

The OEM Ram Air air filter parts were shaped with flow in mind, the factory engineers were on the ball when they designed their tin parts for their high performance cars. The aftermarket took decades to get the smooth contours that the OEM stuff had in the 60s and 70s.

FWIW, in multiple tests I watched, Purolator One, and Wix were among the best in filtration at a reasonable flow rate.

Being this is the race section, most guys dont care about the best filtration in their dedicated race cars, they want air flow for max performance. .1 is quite a big improvement at 0-60 for just a filter...

K&N filters may not filter as well as paper but wont damage an engine, street or race.... I know guys been using them for 15+ years & 250k+ miles on their daily hard use work trucks or normal daily drivers... the engines are running perfectly fine after all that time & miles then get sold & run for a very long time for the new owners.

I thought I'd throw this out there as these are Wix racing Air Filters, page 8 that flow upwards of 1000 cfm's Great for us guys with limited room and dominator style carbs. I run the 16" style filters.
https://www.wixfilters.com/content/d...ng_Catalog.pdf

Interesting on the WIX chart!

Not everyone races/drives on concrete or asphalt, the guys that run dirt know full well that gauze filters ruin ring seal, and cost longevity, and power as ring seal goes away.

I live in the country and drive on dirt roads occasionally, Everything I drive has paper air filters because I never know when I might be on a dirt road. I feel safer 100% of the time being able to go 0-60 in 5.0 seconds rather than 0-60 in 4.9 seconds in the LS2 GTO with a gauze filter.

Years ago sprint cars ran with no air filtration, open 8 stack fuel injection. Back at that time race teams pulled engines from junkyards and when one blew up they grabbed another one. Today a competitive late model or sprint car engine is $50,000, you'd never see a late model, or a sprint car without a filter system. Seems that poor to no filtration wore engines out rapidly, and cost money to repair. They tried gauze and it let too many fine particles through causing poor ring seal.

I've pulled engines down that still ran, but were run without adequate air filtration. They still ran, but the pistons and cylinder walls were scored, ring seal wasn't good, but they still ran good enough to get from point A to point B. If all you want is mediocre, then run gauze air filters. Run a bore scope into the cylinders of one of the engines that was running a gauze filter and see what it looks like, then tell me that there is no downside to mediocre air filters.

I'm curious that if mediocre filtration is all that is required, why is it that all manufacturers spend a ton of money on air induction systems, then equip their cars with paper filters. I've never seen a production car with a gauze filter from the manufacturer. Maybe it's because the manufacturer has to stand behind a warranty for drivetrain, and emissions that would be compromised with a gauze filter.

K&N isn't going to rebuild anyone's engine if it fails early from ingested particulate are they? Aftermarket performance parts really have little to no warranty, Even if they said that they'd warranty an engine, you'd be on the hook to prove in a court of law that their product contributed to an engines early demise.

K&N in their videos says that their product falls into the Moss Magnuson Act
, which states that the manufacturer must prove that an aftermarket part caused damage to the manufacturers product to void the manufacturers warranty. That puts the cost on the manufacturer to undertake testing to prove the aftermarket part caused harm. It's going to involve a lot of time and money to prove that. Cheaper to just settle out of court.

Of course someone will argue that point because they know someone's uncle that never ran any air filter and their engine ran 40 years without incident, or they called some self appointed expert, and asked their opinion, they said, gauze filters perfectly.......................:rolleyes:

Arguing the point is fruitless, I know what I've seen and done in real time during my life, and was trying to convey what I've experienced in the hope it would help someone. Anyone that wants to run gauze filters is perfectly free to do so. Knowing what I know from real life experience I won't be doing that. I just try to help members here from the school of hard knocks, I'm getting too old to argue every little point on this board with the naysayers that find joy in contradicting me, cheap thrills I guess.

Anyone can disregard what I say, but some people have to go 180 degrees and voice their opinion for everyone to see. I dismiss a lot of internet opinions, and just go on with my life, some people just can't leave it alone.

In 2007 i bought a Honda Civic the first car with a remote filter and ducting for me high desert CA. lots of fine silica dust in the air, first oil change i checked and blew out the engine air filter noticed a fine talc dust in the ducting after the original paper filter soon got a K&N put it in cleaned the duct and never saw any dirt in the duct again up to 267K miles when i traded it ... K&N had superior filtration in this case