I was told today by the Local NAPA parts house that a K & N filter or any other oil soaked filter will cause oil to coat a sensor in the intake pipe that will cause problems, and I should use only the stock Ford filter or equivelant. Sure would like to know if any one is using the K&N or similar filter with good or bad results.

 

i was getting ready to get one...i could be very, very wrong but IMO the guy is crazy. The only sensor i am aware of in the intake pipe is the mass air flow sensor; these are in just about any new vehicle, gas or diesel, so by that token it would be bad to put a k+n on anything. That just doesnt fly. Im sure k and n or any other company would be smarter than that.

 

Absolute nonsense!..Sounds like someone trying to switch you to something he had in stock. There is no sensor in that trac. If you will pull off the intake tube at the turbo inlet and stick your hand in there, you will get oil on your hand which is normal reversion. If there is oil in the intake trac anyway, how can oil on an air filter hurt anything? I have a K&N FIPK on my 6.0 and it works perfectly. Seat of the pants was worth 20 HP and a cool intake sound.

 

There was just a post in the 7.3 forum about a dusted turbo from a K&N. Do you really want to risk a new engine for the K&N?

 

MAF (Mass Air Flow) sensors have two wires in them, one is heated to a certain temp and the amount of electricity used to maintain that temp is the indication of the amount of air flowing past it. Excessive oil from any source can make the MAF think there is less air coming in than actual flow. The 6.0L MAF is upstream of the normal oil reversion and the only way to increase the amount of air flow though any filter, is to make the filter larger or more porous. More porous means more dirt!!!!!

 

There was no dusted engine from a K&N filter. There were a lot of malicious rumors over on the Flamer site by people who had an interested in selling brand B. There are independent lab tests(I have written these words 3 times so far on this forum) that K&N filters will filter as well if not slightly better than the stock air cleaner. You can read the letter at the K&N web page. K&N has been the worlds largest aftermarket Air Cleaner supplier for a LONG time. Desperate people will do anything to capture market share.

 

All the dusted engines I have seen were from poor filter sealing or lack of maint. I have seen K&N filters in 7.3L not sealing in the housing, and a visible dirt track passing by the edge of the filter! I have seen lots more completely filthy K&N filters that were so restricted the air tube would collapse on accel. You can't just install and forget!!

 

I've debunked this claim on the forum at least three times in the past. There is a letter from K&N posted at the dieselStop.com That explains things without me going to a lot of work. The short of it is K&N filters are of a different material than paper. Independant test lab data proves the dirt removal question. The PSD "Bible" states the oil in the intake is normal. Mine has been wet as far upstream as the entrance to the air filter. The oil in the wires doesn't evaporate in the air like solvent or water would. The only way to change a mass air reading is to reduce the temperature of the wire. Evaporative materials can do this for a short period. Oil wont.

 

Ask Toreador Diesel what he thinks about K&N filters. He reported last week that his turbo had MAJOR damage. As Fordtech1 said, you can't decrease restriction over the same surface area without also decreasing filtration. Do you honestly believe what K&N says on their website? Any company will tell you why their product is the best in order to make money. I'm basing my information on real world information. These are not rumors and you can find plenty of first hand information on this website.

BTW, your stock air filter filters at 99.9%. Do your research before you post a rebuttal (sites other than K&N). Other tests have proven that the K&N filters at a much lower rate when clean and closer to their estimated rate when dirty. Of course when it's dirty it has more restriction. I suggest you do a search over at the diesel stop rather than just reading that letter. Most of the guys there wouldn't put one in their truck.

 

Coatings of oil and dirt on the MAF insulate the wires and keep them hotter than if they were clean, if something was cooling the wires the PCM would add fuel thinking more air was flowing past it. Debunk all you want.

 

[QUOTE=johnsdiesel]Ask Toreador Diesel what he thinks about K&N filters. He reported last week that his turbo had MAJOR damage.

Ok, wait a second. Major damage from what made it through a properly installed a cared for K&N filter? Come on, give me a break. What made it through the filter, a pebble? Or maybe he was driving through a sand storm? Come on, think about it. I'm not going to sit here and argue weather the K&K filters better than the stock one or not. In fact, I would be willing to say it doesn't. But there is NO WAY anything large enough to damage a turbo is going to be able to make it through a K&N. I have had a side business for four years that builds 600, 700 & 800 rear wheel HP turbo imports, and virtually all of these cars run K&N cone filters. Not one that we have built, or any others that we know of for that matter, have ever had a turbo failure because of the filters. Hell I run TWO (one per turbo) of them on my 630+ RWHP 300 ZX twin turbo, and have for years and they are just fine. And I'm talking about a $6000 set of turbos, so yeah, I guess you could say I trust them. For a truck that sees the off road, or is used on dusty job sites and the like, then no, I probably would not want to use a K&N. But for the truck that is used under "normal" conditions, on the street and highways it would be just fine.

 

OK, so a lot of you 6.0 PSD guys will learn the hard way. Yes, even properly cared for K&N's let too much dust through. Cummins actually warns specifically against the K&N becaust of the damage it can cause. If you take a poll of all the diesel owners over at the diesel stop almost all would recommend against the K&N.

Anyway, I'm done posting on this thread. It's obvious that some people can't be convinced that just because a K&N is good in a gasser that doesn't mean it's OK in a turbo diesel. I'm just trying to provide information from experience and a large cross section of diesel owners to those of you who might own your first diesel.

To each their own. At least we can agree on Ford.

 

Well I would say that Cummins says that because of how a lot of diesels are used, which does involve a more than normal "dirty" environment. And no, under those circumstances I would not use a K&N either. In fact, my truck goes to my hunting lease. That's obviously and "off road" environment and the stock air filter is all I plan on putting in this truck. To it's credit, even Banks said the stock filter was not very restrictive. That's the reason they will not be coming out with any type of intake for this truck. It already has a very good straight flow, cold air design, with a quite NON restrictive filter. I applaud Banks for there honesty and for not trying to just make a buck by trying to sell something that really won't do much, if anything at all. So really John, you and I kinda agree. We both WONT be putting K&N's on our trucks..LOL

 

Some people just don't want to be confused by the facts. Try
http://www.knfilters.com/facts.htm#WORD
on this page are links to independent lab tests. This proves the fact that K&N air filters provide filtration equal to ot superior to the factory air cleaners.
I have struggled with these same people on this forum who have they minds made up based upon what they read on some flamer site or from their buddy. Their buddys truck could have died from any number of reasons (no test data documentation available)but the data supports the idea that it was NOT the K&N filter.

 

I work in the automotive field and we are having problems with mass air meters getting oil on the heater of the meter which will give the ecu a false reading of lean or rich.It is all due to all the aftermarket intake kits out there for the jap cars.