A friend has offered one for not a lot of money, he has had it installed for nearly a year and said it may benefit from cleaning. Has anyone here serviced a K&N air filter, is it straight forward enough without risking damage, and do you have to use the official K&N air filter oil?
k&n air filters
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The panel type are more suitable for that car as the airbox feeds from outside the engine bay. The cone type will just suck in hot air from the engine bay. Word on the street when I had my Mk4 was that the oil on the filter could cause the MAF (airflow meter) to fail. You'd get the same performance benefit from changing your paper filter more often at only £5 a shot.
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As it's a VW don't oil it afterwards, I know all the filters supplied at work (Pipercross) for VAG fitment mk4 onwards aren't pre-oiled as it caused MAF issues.
an open cone isn't worth the bother as already stated,without a proper kit with heat shield etc you'll just have heat soak issues increasing intake temps sapping power.
an open cone isn't worth the bother as already stated,without a proper kit with heat shield etc you'll just have heat soak issues increasing intake temps sapping power.
Cheers for the heads up re cone filter, think ill just look at changing the paper one some point for a decent cotton one. My other concern was the K&N cone could/would make th car sound far too loud, I assume a decent cotton one in the stock box wouldnt increase engine noise.
Has anyone actually done any decent testing when it comes to heat soak on a naturally aspirated car?
Cone filters like the K&N cause issues with airflow into the engine. If your car has a maf the K&N will cause the air to roll through the maf causing inacurate measurments. Cone filters like Apexi use an internal cone that smooths and directs the air into the maf and reduces the rolling effect. Also heat soak is a big problem, generally a decent or even new standard panel filter will give better results. Most people use a cone for the induction noise if you like that kind of thing....
Can you link to any studies or articles where the effects of "heat soak" on naturally aspirated engines are recorded and discussed?
I had a K&N panel filter in my Mk4. There was a bit more intake noise with a raspy edge to it particularly above 4000rpm. My mate who was into cars noticed it without being told, by Mum probably wouldn't.
Compared to aforementioned mates Golf VR6 with a Pipercross CAI on it the panel filter was ... very mild.
Compared to aforementioned mates Golf VR6 with a Pipercross CAI on it the panel filter was ... very mild.
You can have the same issues with non oiled filters. Its the Air flow through the Maf with a K&N or other filter the air rolls as it is sucked through the filter causing the MAF to mis read. If you google apexi filters you will see they have a cone on the inside of the filter which smooths the airflow through the MAF and into the intake.
I can't remember where but one of the big tuners did a lot of testing on the different types of filters and this issue was brought up.
Well you can screw studies all you like, but they tend to give facts rather than opinions. Talking of facts, here's one - your brain will lie to you and tell you the car feels different even if it doesn't. It's called placebo effect and it's the reason tests and studies come in handy.
I had a open style intake on my old teg as well as a AEM cold air style intake. I personally prefered the short ram style so i decided to do a simple test with a temp probe located where the fiters would be for each.
Now while moving (inculding speeds as low as 30mph) the temps were always in 1deg c of each other and most of the time the temp was the same. If you parked the car up and sat still then yes the temp in the engine bay did go up......but no more than 5 deg c......and once moving came right back down again. The car had been running before carring out the test so it was up too running temp also.
Make of it what you will
Now while moving (inculding speeds as low as 30mph) the temps were always in 1deg c of each other and most of the time the temp was the same. If you parked the car up and sat still then yes the temp in the engine bay did go up......but no more than 5 deg c......and once moving came right back down again. The car had been running before carring out the test so it was up too running temp also.
Make of it what you will
i think u r just gettin arsey because u r using an open cone filter and everyone is slagging them off
when i had the K&N i could feel slight flat spots under acceleration at times,, normally when i had been sat in traffic or something, so i made a heat shield for it which slightly improved the problem,, so with that that in mind i then made fully enclosed sealed box for it, fed it with an air feed from down by the bumper which completely solved the problem,, so thats my testing done under 3 different stages using the same filter, and the only thing that has changed from step one too step 3 is that it could no longer draw air from the engine bay, its not a placebo effect.