Conversation came up last night over air filters. Question was should air filters be oiled. My bus has a Baldwin filter which is similar to a K&N and all my K&N race filters and even my new bike filter get oiled. My friend says No, never oil the bus filter! Since I just installed a new one, I'd really like to know.
Ace
Ace,
I am not familiar with a Baldwin Filter. What does Baldwin say to do? Does the manufacturer recommend oiling? If so, they probably will also recommend the type oil to use. I have a K&N on our bus and K&N even sells the recommended oil (and cleaner) for the filter. I am pretty sure Donaldson, WIX, and Fram do not recommend oiling their filters. Jack
If the filter media is foam then probably needs oil,(high tack) if paper, then no oil.>>>Dan
Ace, are you saying Baldwin says to put oil on the filter like a K&N or is it something you did to mimic the K&N?
Thanks
Jack
I have not oiled the filter and not sure what Baldwin says yet but will check later. It looks just like a k&n. It is not foam but niether is the k&n.
Ace
Ace, I looked at the Baldwin site, that filter does look very similar if not exactly like the K$N. It did not say anything about oiling it though. I don't beleive I would.
I picked up a little bit of fuel mileage going to the K&N, about a 1/4 MPG which over the life of the filter...not to exclude not having to replace it...just clean and oil it...aint too shabby!
I am talking about the one on the Diesel Chevy, the K&N cost $50.00 plus shipping on ebay...I noticed the Fram at WallWorld is $89.99!
Why would a K&N filter need to be oiled where as a very similar filter of another brand not need be? I can understand foam vs paper but when they are almost identical, that puzzles me!
The reason the question came up was on our latest outing I noticed a difference in acceleration as if it the bus was laboring to get up to speed. It has run flawlessly the last two times out since being worked on and the filter is one of two things I have changed since. The other item was a new air governor which I took out of the equation thinking it had nothing to do with acceleration. The filter on the other hand can one way or the other! Thinking about putting the old filter back in and see if anything changes.
Ace
Ace
K&N filters need to be oiled to help them trap dust. I once used one on a car. They do give a bit better mileage since they obstruct air flow less. I stopped using them however, when I read independent tests that concluded that they did not filter as well as good paper filters. There was also some significant differences between different brands of paper filter. Fram did not do as well as Wiks. I think that Wiks makes the filters for Napa. If you use the K&N without oil, you may even get better mileage. Of course, you will also get reduced filtering. Baldwin, as far as I know, makes paper filters, but I guess they may also have models that are reusable. Best check with Baldwin on the model you are using.
If you guys can get a Detroit Diesel Engineering Bulletin No. 39 it will take all the guess work away from air filters and exhaust systems.The paper filters will filter the air 99.8% to 99.9% the old oil bath filters were 96% to 98%.
Detroit strongly recommends the dry type paper filters the bulletin 39 is 30 pages with charts and graphs with the static losses of each bend for you to design your air and exhaust system.
I will be posting the bulletin when I get back from the Crawfish Festival around May 10th
Before we get into the copyright law thing this is a bulletin and it says you can copy it
good luck
hello;
Dont want to get into the oil/ no oil debate .
My opinion is the same as the Detroit bulletin .
A maintenance tip that a retired cummins mechanic relayed to me:
Around the top and bottom seal for your filter put a light coating of grease to trap ony particles that may manage to get around the filter. I try to use grease that will not hurt rubber as to not cause the seals to disintegrate.
IT sounds like a good idea however everyone needs to make their own decisions..
Regards and Happy bussin mike
Ace,
Do you have a filter minder vacuum gauge? That should answer the question of whether or not you have too much restriction.
Luvr,
I have followed the oil bath/paper debate as long as I can remember. Yours is the first info that broke the performance down to % of particulate trapped. Thank you for that.
Here to fore I had been convinced that the OB was the superior filter. Your info changed my mind....but only briefly. Maybe it, my mind, can be bent back to GM's or yours again and I hope someone cares enuf to try if they think my following reasoning is faulty.
Foam filters: I used to ride two cycle cycles in the desert. We went thru a LOT OF ENGINES that were dirted out. It is surprising how little sandy "grit" it takes to eliminate HP. We never put a filter on without applying grease to all mating surfaces regardless of the filter type. The foam filters, and K&N was only one brand albeit the best performing of that type at that time, all needed a "high tack" oil to function anywhere near their spec. These were the hands down favorites and NOBODY ran with the stock paper filter IN THE DESERT. Without oil, the foam filer filtered as well as household window screening.
The plus with foam, besides the fact that it filtered really well, was that it cleaned itself for a long time. A fresh filter would cake up with dust till it looked "sealed". Then it would just sluff off that cake and look fresh clean and oiled in the cleared spots. We learned that we had been over cleaning our filters doing it after every outing.
Tests showed that a fresh paper filter stopped finer particles than the OB. This was because the finest of the dust was so small and without mass that it made the turn at the bottom of the OB and continued in the air stream into the engine. I suspect that these particles were so small as to be dwarfed by the carbon particulate that builds up in our oil. Ie, it can't do much harm if it is thinner than the oil film on the internals. Might be an overstatement there. The problem here is that paper fills up to a point really quickly and then becomes restrictive. While this doesn't wear out the engine it sure plays havoc with MPG. Paper always stopped finer particles than the OB but paper needed changed very often to approach the efficiency of the OB and the inference is that you can't afford to that kind of PM sched. so effectively...you understand!
That is not to say that we never used paper cause we certainly did. If you go through a water crossing with you Buddy beside you and the race is on....well a K&N let just barely enuff water thru to water lock you two stroke. That is to say that it let all the water thru that came even close to it. Proved many times when course had unexpected water hazard. Paper, on the other hand, never let water stop you unless you got submerged.
My first choice would be OB cause it will perform better longer than anything else. Farmers I have talked to swear by OB and we all know how mechanical they are and how tightly they adhere to PM sched. And that is my choice despite the OB being labor intensive to service.
Foam is my second because it is efficient in that it can be serviced and cleaned. Still, paper has less resistance to air flow for a short period at the beginning of a service interval.
Paper is cheap. Some of it is truly expensive. While it all looks the same, none of it actually performs the same going from brand to brand. It needs serviced/changed more often, isn't reusable and has the unintended consequence of dragging down MPG. I know I would go with paper if I were doing water crossings at 70 MPH with a bus. Now here is a fly in the ointment: a friend had a Monaco with a Cummins AND a paper air filter. In a real down pour he would stall out when he passed a semi going the other way on a two lane highway. He had to let it sit for an hour and then it only limped to life and gradually gathered itself up enuff to carry on. Monaco had not a clue. He spent some time at the factory cause he thought, and they did too for awhile, that he had an electrical problem. It evolved that their paper filters were stopping up when hit with heavy road spray. I guess no lie is true all the time.
About dirt getting in the oil: VW's never had an oil filter in their air cooled engines as far as any of the three I owned. In the bottom of the crank case was a replaceable metal screen. Dealer told me that carbon is thick enuf to do damage unless it is allowed to accumulate and get turned into chunks. Mine all made it 100K miles.....go figure. Sounds like a Pollack story doesn't it.
Take note that I never went into calculus, nor measurements in joules or any such. Low tech discussion on my part.
My thoughts,
John