i will agree with you 100% on this statement. luckily im a cityslicker from detroit!

the only dirt road my truck sees is "up north" probably 10 miles or so spread out over a year...

 

It is clogging faster because it also has less surface area than the factory paper filter

 

ALL "independent" tests are bias. This guy wanted to feel better about spending less money. I've seen it first hand with oils. I highly doubt the R&D of a high flow filter was done by a bunch of hillbillies drinking moon shine saying "hey less make a new type o' filter and make it look red and say ya' cin go faster. . ." they did testing to justify and test the theory. Everything is a trade off. Gain power hear, lose power there. Spend less here, spend more there. Whatever you fancy, normal driving, it doesn't matter what you put in as long as there is something there. Until I see a dyno pull for every filter in every vehicle I will never belive that it gains "x" amount across the board.

 

I think you misunderstood my post, the K&N filter allowed 18 times more dirt into the engine and exceeded the "maximum flow restriction threshold" of the test 3 times faster than the OEM filter.

Yes I would say that is a bad thing.

 

Marketing gimmik at best...

 

Did you happen to look and see who Stowes customers are? Might want to take a look
http://www.stoweenterprises.com/project.htm

The serious race guys use dynos like that, and there are several of them near me.

 

I do know the diesel guys who switch to k&n type filters see increased silica on oil analysis reports then shortly after start seeing increased PB and CU levels from bearings getting chewed up by the dirt the filter passes into the engine. That’s good enough for me.

 

Where are these reports? Do you have a link?

I want to see the oil analysis on a truck that used a K&N compared to a truck that did not use a K&N. The engines need to have the same miles, be the same type, etc. What I am saying is that I want to see a real experiment with the only variable being the filters.

What were the driving conditions of the truck tested? Was it in a sandy area or was it a city, suburbs, etc?

Bearings wear out over time anyway. Another question I have is how does an increase in dirt in the intake, intake manifold, and combustion chamber end up in the oil? I understand there is blow by, but an increase that causes bearing to fail means dirt is getting in the crank case.

 

Ok let me talk slowly so you can understand.

Read this report that compares a K&N type filter to an OEM AC Delco filter.

http://www.duramax-diesel.com/spicer/index.htm

Ok, the test is a measure of filter restriction.

The K&N filter starts out restricting 4.45 inches of water.
The OEM filter starts out restricting 6.23 inches of water.

The test was run by feeding the filter dirt at a constant rate of 9.6 grams per minute. During the test the restriction of each filter was measured as well as the amount of time it took for the filter to reach a maximum restriction limit of 10 in/h2o+initial restriction. (so 14.45 inches of water MAX for the K&N and 16.23 inches of water for the OEM filter).


The K&N filter

• Reached its maximum restriction level in 24 min. (3 times faster than OEM)
• Captured 221 Grams of dirt (37% less than OEM)
• Passed 7 Grams of dirt into the engine (18 times more dirt in the engine than OEM).

The OEM - AC DELCO paper filter

• Reached its maximum restriction level in 60 min.
• Captured 574 Grams of dirt.
• Passed 0.4 grams of dirt into the engine.

Looking at the chart on the website titled "ISO 5011 AIR Filter Test: Dust Loading Curves", you can clearly see that the restriction of the K&N type filter exceeded the OEM paper filter after only capturing about 180 grams of dust. After that the OEM filter provided better flow.

I cant make this argument any simpler.

 

And to me it's somewhat revealing that when K&N does their testing that they do not do fine dust testing on gasoline engine filters. My suspicious side says that if they performed acceptably with the fine dust that they would use those results.

http://www.knfilters.com/efficiency_testing.htm

Under the parameters of the ISO test, the user may select the grade of test dust used. The content of the two most commonly used types of ISO test dust for air filters are as follows:


As has become customary in the automotive industry, we use Coarse Test Dust for gasoline engine air filters and Fine Test Dust for diesel engine air filters. This practice of using different grades of test dust developed because Diesel engines require higher levels of filtration because they operate at much higher compression and require finer tolerances than Gasoline engines.