I didnt see this linked yet, you can always make one of these, there cheap and they work great.

http://www.turbomopar.com/craig/dako...dakintake.html

I made one last week and only spent about 70-80$, by far a cheap and effective mod.

 

My filter has crap on it after 1000 miles that, to me at least, warrants a quick shot with the air hose. It sometimes has pieces of leaves on it, pieces of grass, pieces of foam, God knows what else shows up on the thing. I didn't mean to imply that I actually "clean" it every 1000 miles. I just shoot it with air to knock the loose crap off. I clean it every other oil change, just as if I was replacing a paper filter. By that time, it is straight up brown, with little to no visible red left, and it needs to be cleaned. So I clean it.

I live in Michigan. In the winter, there is salt dust flying around everywhere. Plus, they use sand lots of times in an effort to extend the salt they throw down. Problem is, that sand is dusty too. So, all winter long, I am driving around sucking in salt and sand dust. You can actually see it flinging up off of the car in front of you and hear it hitting your vehicle. If my truck sits outside for a day, it looks like someone sprinkled dirt on the windshield. No joke. It is downright dirty here.

In the summer, I go adventuring. Don't drive the truck nearly as many miles as in the winter as I have my car on the road, but when I do drive it is is almost always on a dirt road. Not many good fishing spots to be found on paved roads in my experience. Dirt roads in Michigan in the summer are one of two things: bumpy and muddy or bumpy and dusty. I have driven 15 miles on a gravel/sand two track and looked at the filter afterward and had to get the vacuum out to remove the sand and dirt that had accumulated in the box that the filter sits in.

If I waited a year to clean my air filter, my truck would stop running. It needs air to breathe, and it would not be getting any after that amount of time

Just my experiences, of course...

 

You're never supposed to use compressed air on a K&N filter. It has a tendancy to kill the gauze. I bought a truck one time after the dealership "cleaned under the hood and had to replace all kinds of stuff because the degreaser ae all the oil out of the accessory berrings so I had to do a pump, compressor,alt and pwrsteering. and the K&N got hit with a pressure washer and was really nothing more than a cage with a few threads in it. I lucked out though cause I got the dealership to pay for the parts.

 

Yeah, I know...

But, I've done it regularly for over 100,000 miles without a problem...of course, I am not blasting it with high-pressure, heated water and degreaser as it appears the dealer did to yours.

I am just using the air to blow the debris off the surface. I suppose I could take a pair of tweezers and pick it all out piece by piece...but that ain't gonna happen.

I have to ask though, why would air flowing through an air filter cause damage? I would think that would qualify as a design flaw

 

it's not so much the air as it is the Concentration and high pressire in and/or on a small area of the filter. Plus the manufacturers generaly advise against it for their own benefit because of the high concentration of ignorants within the masses who would use such a high pressure from the wrong side of the filter and end up forcing debris through the filter instead of washing from the inside out. Sounds like you aren't damaging yours though so you must not fit in such a category. Keep up the good work and congratulations on making something last.

 

I know how you feel. In Vermont all the roads off the main road a dirt. And I know fromt driving on my girl friends road a lot that they are horrible in mud season and then dusty as hell until next october. I also have a K&N drop in because it came with the truck. But I definitly think you get your moneys worth if you keep it for the life of the vehicle. You never need another filter again. But I will soon be replacing it with a CAI.

 

I was just thinking...

The K&N is supposed to improve mileage. I average about 15.2 mpg with that filter. Now, does it seem safe to suppose that the filter generates a .2 mpg increase? That seems pretty minimal and I wonder if it an acceptable, conservative estimate. I will treat it like it is for a second. If anyone has information that would call such a modest increase into question, then I would be more than happy to retract what I am about to say. Of course, if it has been shown that there is, in fact, a substantially higher increase in mpg, then what I am going to write will be a gross underestimate.

So, if I get 15.2 mpg with the K&N, over 100,000 miles I have pumped 6,578.9 (give or take) gallons of gas through the truck.

Had I been getting 15 mpg, those same miles would have required 6,666.7 (give or take) gallons of gas.

That gives me an 87.8 reduction in gallons of gas over the course of 100,000 miles, right? At $2.65 a gallon (that is what the sign at the station said when I passed it this morning - of course the price will effect the total amount of savings), I have saved $233.

So, yeah, I would say that over the life of the truck, if the filter produces even a very modest .2 mpg increase, the savings will be pretty significant.

 

Most of the time, you won't save gas with a K&N. Now that you have read that, do you want me to explain or are you going to tell me i'm wrong?

 

K&N can save you money on filters, not gas.

 

NAH, I won't say you are wrong...

Notice all of the "IFs" I used. I have no idea if the K&N does anything to gas mileage at all. In fact, way back in the very first post I ever made, I said "I don't know why I still have the stupid thing on the truck."

I was just making the point that IF there was an increase, it would not need to be very large to add up to some real money over the course of, say, 100,000 miles.

So, I welcome a reason to remove the K&N filter. Can you provide it? I just want to justify throwing the thing away. As it stands now, I have no reason to believe it is hurting anything, but if that is, in fact, the case, then it will be gone and I will no longer have to mess with it.