Did any of the dentside trucks ever come with the oil bath cleaners. Just curious, because my 79 f350 4x4 400 had one on it when I got the truck. Ill get a pic shorthly.

 

Oil bath air cleaners were standard equipment thru 1966, then became an option.

 

So heres some pics. Notice the 2 vacume fittings on the top side, and then on the bottom side also. That's not rust in there, just oil,

 

I'm just curious, I've never seen one of these. How do they work? Are they better or worse?

 

Back in the days when I first started turning wrenches they were very common. They are very restrictive but do quite well when properly maintained in a dusty environment. Modern oiled filters like K&N do better with less restriction.

 

Oh okay, so instead of paper the oil acts as the filter. It seems like it would be restrictive, but I bet it does give some clean air

 

They work great, way better than paper elements or anything else. Just kind of a pain to service. Sometimes hard to find these days, because people would throw them away.

Carburetors are setup to run with a specific size and volume air chamber, and overall height in particular. Swapping them out can cause tuning issues that are tough to diagnose.

 

They were popular with farm and fleet trucks and are quite efficient.
The way they work is really simple. Air enters and travels straight down, at the bottom of the filter the air has to make a 180° turn and start traveling straight up. The dirt particles have more momentum than air and can't make that sharp turn. They keep traveling straight down and get trapped in the oil at the bottom.
Anyone who's ever serviced one of these is familiar with the layer of mud at the bottom of the oil reservoir.

 

Thanks mike!

 

I think the last oil bath I've seen was on our 55 dump truck, I believe it had a 292 in it. I was just a teenager then, and did get to put a few miles on it.

 

Here's a '73 with the oil bath air filter.

 

My brothers '78 F250 had one on the dead engine when he bought it. He kept it as a just in case as we live inland from the volcanic Cascades.

When St. Helens blew the Burlington Northern had to temporarily convert several locomotives to oil bath filters as the silica dust would both plug the standard filters and pass through to ruin the rings.

Oil baths also do a great job of filtering out starlings. Stupid birds.