I purchased one of those foam air filters a year ago, the one that requires a thick oil be massaged into the foam before use. When it showed up in the mail, it already had its first oil bath and was ready to go, all I had to do was take out the paper filter and put in the foam. Easy. Life was good!
Then came time for the first clean and re-oil. The instructions said to place filter into warm soapy water, clean, and let air dry. The instructions were easy enough to understand, and it looked like a simple task. I filled a bucket with the required warm soapy water, and proceeded to place the filter into the bucket. Only to discover the filter was a lot longer than a bucket. So I had to clean one half, turn it, and clean the other half. Then I discovered that oiled foam loves to hold onto anything it might have picked up over the last few months. We’re talking La Brea Tar Pits here! I was pulling out leaves, bugs, sticks, birds, small furry animals, anything that might have wandered in front of the truck was scooped up and deposited into the thick sludge covered foam. There might have been a motorcycle in there, but I wasn’t sure.
Then, after reading this group I discovered the two plastic tabs on the back of the filter housing were known to break, leaving your air hungry diesel sucking in everything it could get it’s turbo around. Not a good thing from I was reading. All this leading to the legendary “dusting”. Something you wanted to avoid. I had also reading about a Napa air filter that could be used to replace the original air box and filter, and I decided this might be the thing to do, especially after my second immersion in oil during the air filter bath.
Did you know a used foam air filter coated with oil is the world’s most filthy item? That’s right, look in a dictionary under “Maximum filth” and there’s a picture of the oil soaked filter I was desperately attempting to clean. The second time around convinced me to go with this other filter that many were starting to use.
I paid a visit to the nearest Napa dealer, and purchased two of the #6637 filters needed. When I got home and pulled one out of the box, the first thing I noticed was the pictures in this website of an installed filter didn’t do its true size justice. This thing was big! I remember reading of a previous poster simply forcing the rubber tube going to the turbo right over the tube on the filter, but with my luck, I’d probably split the rubber in the process. So I spent a little time at the big box hardware and came up with a 4 inch coupling, and a rubber compression sleeve. I clamped the sleeve on the coupling with some silicon sealent to keep things closed and secured. After it dried, I simply clamped this onto the filter, and stuck the fitting into the rubber hose on the engine, and clamped that.
Did I mention I had to remove the existing air filter box? That took a little work, not too much trouble though, just remove some bolts and undo some clips, and the whole thing lifted out. This allowed me to actually get to the battery on the driver side, and since I bought the truck used, I thought it would be a good time to check it. I’ve had the truck just over a year, and imagine my surprise to find the plates in the battery were all exposed and dry. Not good. I had put distilled water in the other battery, and I noticed it had been leaking some gooey white stuff since the last time I had checked it. Obviously, I’ve been lax in taking care of my batteries. So I decided it was time to put new batteries in, as these were probably the originals. I should also mention this is a 2000 F250 7.3L. Living in the desert, I haven’t seen batteries last much longer than four years, so I suppose I shouldn’t feel too bad.
I headed to Sprawl Mart, and discovered they didn’t have what I wanted, neither did Target. So I reluctantly headed for Blind Bob’s Autozone. My son and I call it Blind Bob’s, because every time we went there to get something, we ended up with this sales guy by the name of, you guessed it, Bob. He really was blind in one eye, and couldn’t see very well out the other. We had brought in an electric fan blower motor once because it was bad, and he insisted on plugging it in to test it before letting us buy a new one. As it sat there screaming and literally shooting flames and sparks, he commented he didn’t see anything wrong with it. Thus, Blind Bob’s Autozone. We were fortunate this time, and found the batteries we needed. In taking two out of the racks, a sales droid walked up and said “Diesel huh?”. I replied yes, and took the two batteries up to purchase them. The purchase droid looked at the two batteries and commented, “Diesel huh?” I replied, yes, it’s for a diesel. He replied something to the effect they’re pretty expensive for just a truck, at which point I replied my truck could flip over and drag at seventy miles per hour, anything he was currently driving. Without straining! I shouldn’t have, but nobody insults my baby.
Any way, I have the new filter and batteries in now. Maybe 10K next?

 

Hello and welcome to FTE!

I can't stand the thought of washing a grimy air filter either.

There's lots of helpful people here on the board, they sure gave me some good ideas when I bought my truck a short while ago.

 

bnlange.
I think your post was meant to be amusing but your referance to "blind Bob" was unessessary. To make fun of someone who is in someway physicaly impaired is rude. He's a friendly guy and helps the customers as best he can. It may take him a minute longer on the computer but he gets the job done. There are several of us members of this forum from the area and maybe a friend or relation of Bob's that wouldn't appreciate your criticism. I may be overreacting but being this is such a helpfull and friendly group, I had to comment.

Have a nice day...

 

bnlange... i just did the 10k mod... and am semi-satisfyed by it...Gives more juice off the line... but thats about it..... you might want to conciter some of the alternate resistor mods that you can do 1st... like a 4.7K or something.... just do a form search...there are many posts on what you are concitering... p.s. lol pulling out small furry animals... motorcycles!! haha