I am trying to get a bit more power and maybe better fuel economy. Will the K&N set up help? I am looking at the Performance Kit Gen 2, K&N Part# 57-2524-2. I found it for 243.97 shipped. Is this a good product and will it help my power and economy issues and is the price OK?

Just wondering and thanks in advance for the information.

What kind of truck?


It will help but its not a huge change by itself. Combined with other things (ie exhaust, headers etc) you'll certainly notice a difference. But by itrself its only a fraction of a MPG. Keep in mind it will increase the noise; you'll get a whistling noise. Also look at throttle body spacers. I got a full MPG out of that believe it or not.

Also if you do a lot of offroading be careful. THe K&N Gen 2 is an open element filter with a non solid box. So be careful fording water etc. They do sell an extra cover for when you plan to be offroading.

The best way to increase your MPG is your right foot, but if you're like me thats pretty hard to do.

This won't answer your question but I just installed a 'Ho-Made' hybrid intake on my '98 Nissan Maxima consisting of a big cone shaped K&N filter, a polished steel tube, some rubber hose coupling, and clamps.

I was hoping for the same thing - better mileage and a boost in performance.  Well, the performance is most definitely there, but for now as far as MPG goes, I've thrown that concern right out the window.

It is just way too much fun driving this car now to worry about mileage, the mid-range boost is good and all - BUT THE SOUND!  The growl I'm getting now out of my engine is something I've yet to get bored with.  Maybe someday I will, and when that happens I'll see if the MPG is improved (like that'll matter!)

I've heard that PU's can get a HP boost just by throwing a cover over the bed to cut down on air drag.  I've got a buddy that's torn between spending $250 on a cover for his Dodge PU or $250 on the K&N intake.

I have a similar home-brewed setup on my Jeep. I'll post a pic later

Careful now...what was true 20 years ago could be much different today.  Dyno claims of 2-5 Hp are wildly skeptical comparing a CLEAN paper element with a CLEAN K&N.  $250 clams would keep you in clean filters for quite a long time unless you are doing some Dukes of Hazzard action.

Another thing to consider is the MAF sensor.  There are some MAF sensors out there that can be irrepariably damaged from over-oiling a K&N.  The MAF sensors have a burn-off mode that is regularily exercised.  If too much oil is on the sensor, it attracts fine dirt which bakes onto the element and ruins it.  Permanently.  Some MAF sensors can be as much as $400 to replace.  No, you cannot clean these as the sensor is a membrane about 0.0001" thick.  Look at it wrong and it shatters.  

My suggestion?  Buy as many OEM filters as you can afford for the price of a K&N.  Replace as needed using the light inspection technique.  Chances are, you will come out ahead, at least in time savings.  

Yes, I know you K&N geeks out there will claim horsepower.  After running your precious K&N for 20,000 miles, do this test.  Remove the filter.  Get a white rag.  Wipe down the intake tract immediately AFTER the filter.  This should be clean if the filter is doing its job.  It isn't?  WHY????

If you want to ingest dirt into your engine in the name of power, why not run without a filter?  Even the K&N has some resistance to flow.  Less resistance is better, right?

Oh yes, remove the stock intake system and install a "Cool Air" system.  Right.  ALL MODERN (EFI) CARS HAVE A COOL AIR SYSTEM FROM THE FACTORY!  But the factory systems don't have that "bling-bling" effect.

Install a pre-filter to keep Keith happy.

And what, increase the restriction?  What is the point here?  K&N is for the most part, a snake-oil.

With modern cars able to go 250,000 miles with the highest specific output in 30 years, I doubt the air filters or the catalytic converters are holding them back.

15 years ago the Chevy 350 V8 was making 170 Hp stock.  Now its 300.  With much lowered emissions and better fuel economy today that ever before.  The ZO6 is making what, 405 Hp?  And that is fully streetable, smooth idle.  What more do you need?

When was a full sized family sedan capable of launching to 60 MPH in 4.4 seconds?  Oh yes, that's a special car, the Audi RS6 but guess what, it shares the same air filter as my little VW!  If filter restriction was a big deal, they would have used something else.

K&N has NEVER submitted filters for independent comparison testing...tests funded by K&N or done by them on their own dyno don't count for crap.

As others have pointed out, they do not filter as well as most oem filters, over-oiling can affect sensors downstream in the induction system, and they're pricey compared to what came on the truck.

Finally, if you do get a minute HP boost, it'll be at the expense of low end torque...with a truck, I'll take torque over HP anytime.

I'd say if you want to spend >$200 on an air cleaner, go for it...it's your $$.

Nomex & kevlar both on.

-hanko

My K&N intake tube cracked three times (replaced under warranty) on my Dodge Durango.  Try these guys:

[url]www.intenseperformance.com[/url]

Sure, if it makes more noise you might think its faster.  I too was once 16.  

The dyno doesn't lie.  Why would Saturn intentionally design an intake to reduce power?  

I've tried, and removed a K&N system from my supercharged 4Runner, and went with a drop in the stock air cleaner box "Amsoil" air filter.

A LOT less intake noise, much better cleaning, and seat of the pants HP gain, as well as dyno test hp shows good increases.

My drop in filter cost about 35 bucks.
Re-Oil kit cost about 7 dollars.

You can look for your make, model and engine at [url]www.amsoil.com[/url]

Jay

If you believed everything the bling-bling makers claim, you would believe the red anodized cool-air intake gives 3 extra Hp over the clear coated model.

I am talking verifiable gains, not some statistical noise.  5 Hp is most likely noise as a 5 degree temperature drop can get you that.

Have you done any real testing?  One dyno run is not statistical testing...

Back to the MAF sensor problems, will K&N warranty your MAF sensor?

cold air intake system.............yes
k&n filter................i think its BS, and i've had several in the past

more than anything it pisses me off how soon they get dirty and how damned hard it is to clean them

if you want noticeable power for about your price stated, if the truck is new enough to be computer controlled get a chip or computer programmer, they make a very noticeable difference.  hypertech is the best i do believe, worked like a charm on my last pickup

Oiled cotton gauze type air filters (K&N) yield a high flow rate but they don't filter the smaller particles as well as pleated paper filters.  Pleated paper air filters do a great job removing the smaller particles but restrict flow.  The answer is the oiled foam type air filter: high flow rate, large filtration capacity (up to 50k miles between cleanings), and very fine particle filtration.  Both AMSOIL and ACCEL make this type of air filter for pretty much any car out there.

The term used to describe what we are discussing here is filtration efficiency.  This is the filter's ability to both filter small particles and yield a high flow rate.  This term is also used in oil filters when looking at both the single and multiple-pass efficiency tests.

BTW - For those who may be confused about the K&N kit wiggy is referring to for his truck, it isn't just a filter.  The ~$250 cost gets you the filter, a fitted aluminum duct/intake tubing, bellows/seal, clamps, etc.  If you only want the filter, that costs anywhere from ~$35-$50, depending on the make and model car.

Wow, this is like listening to the kids back in High School brag about having a tunnel ram and two 4 barrel Holley double pumpers on a stock 350 smog motor!

A K&N filter will only help if the stock air filter is the most restrictive part of the system.  Combustion engines, in concert with the intake and exhaust systems, are air pumps.  The more air you can flow through in any given time, the more power you can produce.  If your motor will flow say (pulling numbers out of my ass, I haven't played with this stuff in years) 900CFM, your exhaust system 500CFM, and your air filter/induction tube 600 CFM, you need to replace your exhaust first...because even with an 800CFM filter, your system as a whole can still only flow 500CFM.  Get it?

If the bottleneck in your vehicle is not the air filter, you will see minimal to no gain, at the expense of 250 clams AND added engine wear...I don't care what anyone says, K&N's let more dirt in.  Every factory vehicle is different, they all have strong and weak design areas.  Do some research on your vehicle to find where the most restrictive parts of your powertrain are, approach it from a systematic standpoint, and choose the most cost effective mods consistent with your performance, reliability, economy, and life cycle goals.

Paging Drag_racer_Art!!!!!

I have personal experience to back up Keith's claim. I put a K&N on my '98 F150 5.4L in April 99. I cleaned (using K&N cleaner) and oiled (using K&N filter oil) the filter every 10,000 miles. I was used to the ritual, having used K&N filters on motorcycles and race cars for years. This was my first use of one on a daily driver. In January 2000, after having the K&N on for about 15,000 miles, I got a "Check Engine" light. Took it to The Better Idea boys, who reported a MAF sensor problem. I was standing next to the mechanic when he removed the air intake ducts. As soon as he opened the fliter housing and saw the K&N, he said, "There's your problem." He got down to the MAF sensor, and siad that usually what happens is a layer of crud builds up on the fine wire, whic hincreases resistance and reports a fault to the computer. He cleaned the wire with a cotton swab and some alcohol. The swab had a very distinct black line from the crud on the wire. He put a Ford filter back in, reset the computer and shut the hood. He suggested that I shit-can the K&N, and I agreed. He sliced the thing the long way and put it in the bin. Charge for repair: $15 - they only charged me for the filter - no labor. I was out of there in 10 minutes.

Based on the above personal experience, I will not use K&N filters on regular daily drivers, especially those with modern fuel-injection systems. If I'm looking for more performance or economy, I'll buy another motorcycle. Like a previous poster said, the key to economy is the right foot. A 4,000 pound, four-wheel-drive truck with 265/70R17 tires is not a fuel-efficient vehicle, and can't be made into one. If I want more power out of my truck, I'll put pipes and a module on it.

K&N filters work well for carbureted vehicles, off-rad vehicles, race cars and other particular applications, in my experience.

Cleaning a hot-wire MAF sensor is no biggie.  The wire is stout enough to resist most damage.  Not so with the more modern membrane style MAF elements.  Trust me, they cannot be cleaned.  A piece of hair I used to scrape such a membrane punctured it.  

Modern cars (ULEV, TLEV etc.) need this type of sensor to improve dynamics of flow measurement.    

BS. Unless it's getting air from outside the engine bay, its not a CAI.

And which cars do not?  I look under all the bonnets I can and not a single EFI (multipoint)car has ever had air drawn from under the hood.  

That is from a 1987 VW to a 2004 Corvette.  Yes, my old 1969 Ford was definitely not a CAI but it had a thermostatic control on the air stove so it only drew heated air during cold engine operation.

Multipoint EFI does not need heat because the fuel does not puddle in the intake manifold unlike a TBI or carb equipped engine.

Some people think the engine is drawing air from under the hood based on static operation.  Once the car is moving ~5 MPH, there is sufficient ram air to provide a true CAI for all of the factory systems I have seen.

Funny how they replace the INSULATING plastic intake pipe with a CONDUCTIVE aluminum one to really soak up the under hood heat.  

The assumption is the smoother surface provided by the polished aluminum will yield more efficient, laminar flow.  This will outweigh any thermal conductivity and convection disadvantages.

yes, the majority of cars nowadays do draw air from outside the hot ass engine bay.  however, for noise reasons they do baffle the intake, thus disturbing the flow of air, and the straighter the flow the better the performance.

as mentioned earlier, if this is as older truck, an intake spacer will help significantly.  well, hell, even the newer ones have available spacers and those help also, it allows the fuel to further atomize increasing combustion efficiency.

if this is a basic truck that has had no work done to it as of yet, and it is newer, these are the steps i would take, in order to start.

1.  computer chip/programmer
2.  high flow exhaust system
3.  high flow cold air intake system
4.  the other little things, lower temp thermostat, etc....
5.  break into the guts and go after that SOB

Laminar flow?  At what Mach number?  Theory sounds impressive but in reality, the gains are unmeasurable.  Even the accordian-style bellows used in some intakes does not increase suction head on the intake.  Replacing such a bellows with a solid tube can rapidly ruin a MAF sensor.

You know where this stuff comes from?  Not performance but rather the real racers.  These are CUSTOM cars and its cheaper to make a mandrel bent section of aluminum than a custom blow-molded intake tube.

Every major auto manufacturer knows that what is the best performer may not be the best for sound deadening.  Not everyone wants the extra 3db, or more, of sound that a conical filter would give every engine so epuipped.

3db might not sound like much but the perception of a 3db increase in sound is that it is twice as loud.

You will gain a nominal amount with the clean K&N installed by itself.  Not enough to warrant using it with no other mods.  If you have a remapped ECU, properly tuned and dyno calibrated exhaust and some sort of other goodies the addition of the K&N might help noticeably.  Otherwise it will gunk up and give you about the same performance as your stock setup.

Not really...noise is what you hear from temporal fluctuations in the air pressure.  On the intake, its from the "suction" of the engine breathing through valves that momentarily open.  This noise is resonated through the intake manifold where it actually does some good, increasing air pressure behind the intake valve at certain RPM's giving rise to a torque band improvement.

Where it isn't good is at the MAF sensor.  The sensor can only measure up to its Nyquist frequency.  If the intake reverberation exceeds the Nyquist freq of the sensor, the measurement becomes inaccurate.  

Because this noise is actually a pulsing in the intake, similar flow in a steady-state can be achieved through a much smaller orifice with immeasurable pressure loss.  Picture a single lane road with a fixed number of cars moving on it.  Now picture a 4 lane road with a stopsign.  Even though there are 3 more lanes, a single lane, non-stop road will carry more traffic and do so using less fuel.  Its counter-intuitive but it works.  

The baffles in a filter housing do not affect the sound, they only distribute flow for even filteration.


The pressure loss is in milimeters of water, hardly a measurable effect on engine performance just like the difference in filters.  There is much greater performace loss from a dirty filter than from  a K&N, AMSOIL or other style.  In fact, this "indicating service" nature of a paper filter is far better than the others which offer NO indicator of needing service and in such a state, pass even more dirt.

For real power gains, a new chip provides measurable gains, especially if the engine is turbo/supercharged.

You have a good point with the one-off ease of manufacturing aluminum tubing versus molded plastics.

I'm not entirely sure the flow efficiency gains would be unmeasurable, though.  Makers of performance intake manifolds and heads go to great trouble to ensure smooth flow transition.  On the other hand, I think the increase in intake temps from an aluminum rather than a plastic intake duct would be unmeasurable.  Of course, the only way to be sure about these things is to flow test the hardware in question. [;)]  Everything else is conjecture.

With regards to MAF damage being caused by using a pleated bellows in place of an unpleated unit, is this due to excessive vibration being transmitted from the engine?

There are guys reporting, from dyno measurements, increases of 5whp after getting their heads extrude honed.  In concert with a conical filter, ECU tune, new higher flow MAF, and headers and exhaust they gained 45whp.  On a car rated at 170hp at the crank and a 17% driveline loss, 45whp is pretty good.  But it wasn't with a conical filter by itself and this evolution came at much expense of time and tuning.

The motor is a giant pump, the more air you can [b]cycle[/b] in and out the more efficient and powerful it will be.

Counter intuitive?? interesting.    (My bro-in-law hace one and a lot of the other work done, exhaust systems, etc, final NET benefit was more noise, and had less reliability)

In any case.  Political pressure is on Detroit, et al to increase mileage (CAFE), customer pressure is increase reliability, power and mileage (and probably in that order).  Competitive pressure is to increase the whiz bang between competitiors and to minimize required maintenance costs. The K&N answer is that all vehicle manufacturers decided not to increase mileage, power and reliability.  Hmmm?

All I know is that I go out in the Mojave periodically and the dust is ubiquitous in getting into everything.  I sure don't want it getting in the engine, the K&N doesn't cut it in that environment.