K&N air filter

[Guest tinwoodie]

Hi Guys

Has anyone found an K&N air filter element that will fit in the stock air cleaner to replace the oil bath element? This is for a 1953 roadmaster with a v8>

Thanks Mike

[old-tank]

If your filter is complete, take lower reservoir section to a real parts store and match a paper filter to fit. You will need a generic lid to cover the top of the filter, attach with a new wing nut. Put your old top with muffler over all that and attach with the original wing nut. After you are satisfied that the paper filter would work, trade it for a comparable K&N filter.

Now, why would you want to change to a filter that is more expensive initially, more expensive to maintain and more trouble to clean? The stock oil bath air cleaner just needs one pint of SAE 50 and 1/2 pint of mineral spirits or charcoal lighter to service and will dry in 15 minutes; the K&N needs a special cleaner, water wash (drying time 2 hours), then a special spray coating. Filtering: the K&N is inferior to the paper filter which is inferior to the old oil bath. K&N flows more air than the paper, but about equal to the oil bath.

Willie

[NTX5467]

PLUS . . . the paper filter element will probably flow as much air as your engine can consume! Once upon a time, there was a Popular Hot Rodding (I believe, it's been a few decades ago) air filter test that tested many brands of 14" air filter elements against the lauded K&N filter of the same size. This is the size that the Corvette open element filter case uses . . . and all look-alike aftermarket filters use. The K&N did flow the most air, but the plucky "yellow paper" Motorcraft filter was very close in 2nd place.

I had a K&N on my '77 Camaro for a while. I had the requisite open element air cleaner on it. The "red" surgical gause filter looked neat and all powerful. The special cleaner seemed to be re-packaged "409" cleaner. The "re-charge" oil was messy and you could easily get too much of it on the element. It was time consuming to "service" the K&N . . . especially as oil attracts "dirt", you never really knew when it was time . . . then other tests showed that "dirty" K&Ns flowed not much less air when dirty. Oh, and for all of that trouble and extra cost, you got a "warning" decal and a neat "K&N Equipped" decal. Former was to tell service people to not throw the "dirty" K&N away and the latter was for bragging rights.

I found the correct part number for the Motorcraft filters and used them and could tell no performance difference . . . guess they flowed enough air for what I had. Cost less, too!

Besides, when you do the "Old-Tank" mod, you can't see what's in there, anyway! If the normal Motorcraft air filter element would do just as well as the K&N in my application, it'll probably do similar for you. Or any other OEM-level brand of air filter element, too.

You'd probably be better off "J-gapping" your spark plugs, performance and efficiency wise.

Regards,

NTX5467

[avgwarhawk]

Now, why would you want to change to a filter that is more expensive initially, more expensive to maintain and more trouble to clean? The stock oil bath air cleaner just needs one pint of SAE 50 and 1/2 pint of mineral spirits or charcoal lighter to service and will dry in 15 minutes; the K&N needs a special cleaner, water wash (drying time 2 hours), then a special spray coating. Filtering: the K&N is inferior to the paper filter which is inferior to the old oil bath. K&N flows more air than the paper, but about equal to the oil bath.

Willie

When it is laid out on the table like this who can argue?