Nope. Got a leaf blower

Plus some amateur measuring equipment to measure velocity and baro pressure drops, etc.

quote:

Originally posted by Michael:
Nope. Got a leaf blower

Budget flow-bench !!!!!

kewl. Let us know how it goes !!

I will do that if I ever get ahold of the intake boxes.

Here's an old, tired, and controversial opinion:

Someone who posts over at thedieselstop.com did a flow bench test (on a $30,000 flow bench, with an additional $5,000 worth of software) of over a dozen air filters at Gale Banks Engineering back in 2002. The K&N, the Volant, and the AFE were all part of the comparasion study, along with various versions of stock filters for the same application (7.3L Powerstroke).

Gale Banks himself actually helped with the tests, mounting and unmounting the entire airbox assembly to the flowbench, making sure the inlet snorkel was pointed in the exact same location (to eliminate variances in distance from wall, temperature, room drafts, etc.).

The end result of that study was that the Volant aftermarket airbox with filter flowed the highest, at something like 1,400 cfm at 25 inches H2O restriction limit.

The engine manufacturer (International) was then consulted as to what the maximum cfm at full power under full load with full boost would be. International happened to have a 7.3 instrumented on an evaluation bench, so they ran test a few times (even though they already knew the answer from product developement and evolvement) and came up with 565 cfm at the rated horsepower.

So why flow 1,400 cfm of dirt and oil, when you can only use a little more than a third of that amount, and would rather have that smaller volume consist of COLD, DENSE, and CLEAN air?

Especially on a non turbocharged, non supercharged gasoline motor of even less displacement that has no way of compressing, injesting, or utilizing that extra volume of air.

In the competitive world of trucks, with the big three being overtaken a little more every year incrementally by the samurai seven, if something as quick, as simple, and as easy as changing an air filter would offer all the horsepower and fuel economy benefits that the aftermarket claims, without increasing risk of component failure in real duty service that the car manufacturer has the best view of, then we'd all have oiled gauze filters in our trucks from the factory.

Fact is, we don't. And there is a reason.

Some of these filters may be great for race vehicles whose engines get rebuilt every year, or sometimes after every race... but to get 10 good years out of a daily driver, I'm sticking with stock when it comes to air filters.

The idea is FILTER, not just air.

I sooo agree. Still there are cases where restriction in the air intake is the pinch, but I think that is rare.

I am also in agreement that just getting the charge air colder is the major improvement to power, lowering the detonation that retards timing so dearly.

Most of the GM's make the provision to get air outside the engine compt, but a few do not, like mine. I have my IAT rise 50 degrees just sitting at the stoplight on a 110 degree day.

Forgetting the filters function seems central to the aftermarket marketing of these. There is a significant difference, and dirt kills motors, like a slow cancer. Oiled foam is relatively poor as a filter.

The KN allows about 17 times more dirt to pass, vs stock. Eyeopening.

Here is the study

air filter study

Awesome link


But c'mon.... 99.93% efficiency for the Delco, 99.23% for my aFe. Ewwwww..... splitting hairs .

Accumulative Gain, .4 vs 1.8.... again... wow.


I'm not trying to discredit the stock system, I KNOW it is good. But I also know we can do better, W/OUT seriously jeopardizing our engines. I won't disagree K&N and some others SUCK, but a few of the aftermarket systems are w/in spittin' distance of the stock unit.

And I proved there IS horsepower to be had thru an aftermarket intake. 14~20hp, in fact.

Those of you not comfortable with the risk, run the stock one and be happy and sleep better at night, but I really feel with a good system (like the aFe), the gains completely out weigh the ever so slight risk some foresee.


In fact, a BETTER test (to me anyway) would be to run all these engines to 300,00~400,000 miles and look and measure wear.

Now THAT would be the impressive test. Although the one Mike linked is pretty nice- detailed, controlled, seemingly unbiased.



Again, run what your comfortable with, but I'm still not convinced the stock system is the end-all to filtration

This may not seem relevant, but which filter would you want to breath through if you worked in asbestos recovery?

IOW, what about the other 99% of the time when the pedal is not on the floor, and the motor is still breathing 500% more dirt?

On the other hand, we don't associate our air with having dirt in it, pretty elusive concept that we wouild even need filtration, right?

If you took a trip every day and only .01% of the parts on the next 737 you board were to fail each time you fly, what would your life expectancy be? This is only to demonstrate the importance of these diminutive numbers. There is over 1 million parts on the 73. That 100 parts failing every trip would soon be deadly.

This may sound argumentative, and it is, a valid one, extremely important. How much sand would you like with your next meal, and how long would your teeth last. If filtration is not that important, then one could go without entirely for the most gain I guess, for a while.

Bringing me to the other issue. I have seen no data on wear due to reduced filtration, but I have heard many stories of guys who pulled off the box at the track and ruined the motor in one race, with significant compression loss and oil burning. That's not quantifiable, but if that is possible in one dirt race, what then is the cumulative effect of 3000 commutes with 99% efficiency, vs 99.6?

One thing that isn't really shown in the study, is how efficiency will degrade when the filter loads up. The air has to come from somewhere, and if the element loads up to capacity, it will come from unfiltered sources, every crack or nook. Many facets of this study become revealing, the capacity of the best and worst is amazing, like 200 g vs 600 g, and the dramatic pressure drop with the filter that is not "clean", the realistic scenario.

It wasn't my intention to get back into this, though I am interested in your test results and how you performed your dyno tests to validate your conclusions. I haven't seen anything you posted on that. I would also consider it important to show exactly what the IAT (as read off the tech II or other diagnostic) was before and during each run. That would help to understand the real sources of power improvement, flow restriction vs air temp vs...

Mike, I'm not trying to argue the point, either, just my opinion.

1st... I don't fly !!! But I do see your point. Very valid.

I never said we don't need filtration, but I think a difference of less than 1% to be rather insignificant. Where'd the 500% come from ??

I agree, running NO filter is just plain stupid. There's lots of crap floating around in the air, but what about if the car in the other lane is in front of you, either spitting rubber chunks or eek- blows his motor and yours ingests a chunk of metal !!!

My intake shoot-out. While I realize, and somewhat accept, the fact that my claimed numbers for the Wester's tune alone came under fire from a few different sources, the actual intake shoot-out itself is, in my opinion, beyond reproach. Same day, same dyno, same dyno operator. Heck, the aFe even had more heat soak than the other runs since it was last in line. That's where my 14/20 gain comes from. This is on a tuned engine, so the results could be a little less on a 100% stock motor, but I think they do represent good, solid data on which flows better.

Being that the aFe did better than all but two of the filters in that link of yours, I'm happy with it, and I feel 100% completely safe running it, and recommending it

Again, filtration is important, but are we splitting hairs, or will that 1% difference really make a difference during the useful-life of the vehicle ?? The only way to know THAT for sure would be a wear comparison. It wouldn't be hard to do, just would need the resources and time, etc.

But again, Mike, I'm not trying to argue with you or discredit the filter comparo, but I'm not convinced that anything less than the stock filter is detrimental to our engines.

Oh, additionally, about the IATs, ALL of the systems I've run so far have provisions for cooler than under-hood air temps. Quite honestly, I think the aFe is WEAKEST in this area. How's that for goofy ?!!? Where all the others are boxed, the aFe is only shielded. (I wondered about running the aFe system in the Volant box !!! maybe another day !!)


And... I just received an Outlaw system yesterday to compare to my aFe. The Outlaw has gotten nothing but RAVE reviews, and dyno comparisons have proven it to be a power maker. Can't wait to compare those two

Stay tuned !!!!!

Did you happen to try removing the intake altogether in your dyno runs, as a comparison to the other runs?

Just my opinion, I don't think I would draw a conclusion from single dyno run comparisons, there are a lot of variable involved, varying runs 10%. Though I have heard also that a dyno run can show improvement with the aftermarket intakes. Track times on the other hand, are not affected, or at least I have not seen one claim of improvement in the diesel world.

"Being that the aFe did better than all but two of the filters in that link..."

Better how? I agree the afe 'appears' to filter better than some of the others, but look into the study. The afe reached the arbitrarily set restriction limit (delta of 10" water), at 24 minutes because it ran out of capacity and loaded up, while the leader continued for an hour loading up with 3X the dirt. And at that point the afe was at 16" water head loss, with the leader still only at 10", with another 400 grams of dirt to come. If the afe had been allowed to continue the test along side for the full hour, then the results would be MUCH different obviously. Some of the resulting charts are misleading at first glance, especially some of the vertical axis scaling. eg. the chart makes it look like there is significant initial restriction differences between elements. 1" water is huge, visually, with the chart manipulation but it is in fact, very negligible.


500%-5x more dirt passed by the afe. 1.8g vs .4g, 1.8/.4=450%. This should read 1000%. Here's why. Again that's .4 g after 60 minutes (stock), and 1.8g (afe) after only 24 minutes, slightly apples to oranges.


Just means it must be cleaned often, maybe with oil changes or more often in dirt application. I would say it has no practicality in dirt applications, an opinion.

Nah, didn't try w/out any filter. What's the point- it'll never be driven that way. And with my luck, a bird woulda flew in the shop right then and got sucked up !!!!

I look over that chart again. I was at work and just kinda glanced over it.

So, after all of this discussion, I've been running my AFE since 2005 and have been mildly pleased.

Since the fires in San Diego County, I'm contemplating getting a new cone filter for my AFE intake. Since I was doing my research, my co-worker turned me on to S&B Filters. I'm just about to switch over to them because of the way that this discussion had ended and not really addressed "which is best". A lot of opinion and a lot of research that can be viewed in several different ways. None I feel worthwhile to argue or support, just different views and opinions. Again, doing my research, it seemed to me that the S&B (sbfilters.com) seems to do a better job of filtration and enough flow for good perfomance increase.

Now my question is whether anyone has used them before and their experience.

Joe