Kn filters

Are you trying to turn your truck into a Honda?

What's the advantage of a K&N? It's a lifetime reusable filter. That's all great but most people don't keep a vehicle a lifetime. Most change vehicles every four years. So those buying K&N filters every vehicle are just wasting money unless they keep the vehicle for several years.

I looked at their website and they only list up to one of them Freightliner Sprinter vans.

 

K&N will kill your diesel as fast as an EGR. The reason they flow so well is because they have larger filter openings, allowing A LOT more dirt in that most other filters. It's called DUSTING, and it will kill your cylinders.

 

Part of the problem with that is they don't maintain the filter like they should, I ran one on my Dodge and never had a dusting problem at all. The one corner of the filter started to get bad, I called K&N about it, they Second Day shipped one to me, no cost.

 

So they do make them for big trucks?

 

yes they do and their oiless

 

Bought mine off of amazon for around 130 and have been running it for the past 6 months on an 07 freightliner with an s60. So far so good no problems with it but like others mentioned we do regularly remove it and give it a good cleaning especially with how dusty it gets down here in south texas...But other then the fact that its washable and can be reused over and over no real noticeble difference in mpg, acceleration, etc over a disposible filter.

 

K&N's heavy duty filters are oil-less and they are not meant to last a lifetime. The warranty is 300,000 miles: http://www.knfilters.com/search/heavy_duty_air_filters.aspx

Filtration is slightly worse than paper, significantly better than foam (which is what the fleet air filter is). They actually filter better the dirtier they get (at the expense of flow). But the benefits in flow are overstated (you may save $150/year out of a $70,000 fuel budget). You also pay $150 for 300,000+ miles of use vs $300 in paper filters replaced every 50,000.



It comes down to whether you want to risk worse filtration for $500 in savings over 2 1/2 years. Me? I say sure. I've run K&N's for 150-200,000 miles on my autos & the only problem was having to spray MAF cleaner one time when I got a bit overzealous with oil (again the semi filters are oil-less). At 98% filtration I figure, a bit tongue in cheek, that instead of going 1,300,000 miles between rebuilds with a paper filter, I'll go 98% of that -- 1,274,000.


filtration tests:
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/airfilter/airtest3.htm
http://mkiv.com/techarticles/filters_test/2/index.html
http://www.nicoclub.com/archives/kn-vs-oem-filter.html

 

The one I put on my '05 T600 475 Acert Cat worked great for me for 4 years, but I stayed after it maintenance wise. I blew it out every other weekend with low pressure compressed air, and washed it every 60 days give or take a few days so I could do it over the weekend, so I could give it enough time to dry. I sold the truck in March, the new owner likes it so far, but I don't know what his maintenance program like. I was off road about 40% of the time that's the reason for my over kill. I bought mine for increased flow, I can only speak from my experience, but I saw slightly higher boost (very slightly) over the fleet washable filter that was replaced three times under warranty, for the seal falling off. I didn't see enough MPG increase to talk about, but like I said I was off road about 40% of the time, and about half of that was high idle PTO work, so MPS's were not my #1 concern. I was more concerned with being able to clean it frequently, because of the off road dusty conditions.