The Importance of Your Cars Air Filter and the New Nano Fiber Air Filter Technology
Just like a certain cigarette marketed to young woman with the slogan “you’ve come a long way baby” Automotive engine air filters have changed to a huge degree since the first simple cars hit the streets approximately 100 years ago.
Early automotive engines had little more than a piece of screen if that to keep contaminants out of the engine. Later, Filter cans mounted on top of carburetors containing motor oil to filter incoming air came into use. Then the modern one piece, drop in pleated paper air filter became pretty much the worldwide industry standard.
But just how important is the engines air filter? Some years ago, Federal-Mogul Corporation, one of the largest and most respected manufacturers of engine bearings and components ran some interesting tests.
These tests showed that between 80% and 90% of all the contaminants that were to be found in the engines oil came in through the engines air filter with the rest being by-products of combustion and metallic particles worn from the engines internal moving parts know as wear metals. That’s right! Most of what your engines oil filter has to deal with came in through the air filter!
Further testing showed that contaminants in the 5 to 20 micron range caused the vast majority of engine wear with larger particles either easily filtered out or too large to get into the tight critical spaces between bearings and other components. Particles smaller than 5 microns were found to contribute to wear also but to a much smaller degree.
How much ingested “dirt” does it take to wreck an engine? During testing, engineers took a 350 cu in. Chevy V-8 on a test stand. Removed it’s air cleaner assembly, brought it up to average highway operating speed and “fed it” laboratory dirt (silica soil determined to be mostly in the typical micron range that an engines encounter on highway) down the intake plenum.
At well less than a tablespoon of dirt the engine lost power. A bore scope was inserted into the engine and determined that the intake and exhaust valves were already heavily damaged. The engine was restarted and the dirt feeding continued. At just less than 2 tablespoons the engine stalled and locked up.
A subsequent teardown and examination found all internal components to be damaged. Cylinders, bearings, valves. Everything!
If you were starting to get the impression that the engines air filter is the most important filter on your vehicle, you would be right!
So lets look at what’s available in air filter media these days. The most common filter media is treated paper, often backed up with glass fiber or other synthetic materials. Depending on the manufacturer these offer varying degrees of airflow and particle removal efficiency.
The other common media is the open wetted (oiled) gauze filter. These have the advantage that they can be washed, re-oiled (usually with special oil containing a tackifying agent) and reused. A well made one can last a long time, sometimes for the life of the vehicle.
The downside is oiled gauze filters have very poor particle efficiency, often many times worse that typical pleated paper air filters. They just don’t catch the small really damaging particles. You can see this by simply holding this type of filter up to a light. Do this and you will see literally zillions of little spots with light coming through. They do offer great airflow though. See all those holes?
Make a paper/glass media dense enough that it has relatively good particle efficiency and the airflow drops significantly. This is made even worse as the filter begins to “load” with contaminants. Oiled gauze filter media offers great airflow but just doesn’t catch the small particles that are the most damaging to an engine.
Today though a modern space age air filter material has now super-ceded even the best of the pleated paper/synthetic blended air filters. The Nano Fiber filter media!
The synthetic Nano Fiber solves all the issues of pleated paper and oiled gauze filter media’s. It has un-believable particle efficiency: 100% efficiency at only 2 microns, catching particles in that critical 5 to 20 micron range.
Nano Fiber air filters are 3 to 5 times more efficient than the best-pleated paper filters and 50 times more efficient than oiled gauze! Its Nano Fiber material also flows air like an oiled open gauze media, even when heavily loaded with contaminants for great dirt holding capacity.
Nano Fiber air filters also have the advantage that they can be cleaned and re-used several times just like the oiled gauze filter. The difference being that the Nano Fiber air filter does not require the expense of a special cleaning and re-oiling kit. The synthetic Nano Fiber has a non-stick like surface. The filter can be vacuumed off or blown off with low-pressure compressed air and used over with no messy cleaning needed.
In 2006, Amsoil Inc. makers of high-grade synthetic motor oils and lubricants introduced the world’s only line of Nano Fiber air filters for the light truck and automotive market. Amsoil offers these revolutionary air filters for most cars and light trucks.
By Larry Crider CLS, Amsoil direct jobber
About the Author
A Larry Crider is a certified lubrication specialist and a twenty+ year veteran distributor for Amsoil inc. The worlds largest independant maker of synthetic motor oils and lubricants.
To contact Larry or get a free Amsoil products catalog through the mail go to www.sowoil.com and “click the pig”
To recieve Amsoil product information by e-mail go tohttp://sowoil.com/e107_plugins/contactform_menu/contactform.php?contact
I love to talk lubrication!
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