How often to change the cabin air filter?

[Noah Abrams]

Unlike the engine air filter this one isn’t so easy to get at and inspect. So how often or at how many miles do you do it?

Thank you

 

[mizzou]

I change out my engine amd cabin filters at the same time once a year. Your manual should give u a factory recomendation.

Dont neglect the cabin filter, its often ignored and can lead to expensive repairs!

 

[boomerang]

I haven't seen a replacement schedule yet that wasn't 30,000 miles. There may be some car makers that recommend earlier, I have no idea.

 

[mizzou]

it depends on how dirty you keep your car honestly. If you are constantly vacuuming your passenger floorboard, you will get a soiled filter much faster then a passenger bay that is never used. I need to find the photo of the muppet cluster in my wifes used car we bought....

 

[dave_the_nerd]

In the spring. After everything melts and dries out, and before the pollen ruins your life.

 

[mizzou]

https://imgur.com/a/kQZHq

 

[jlee]

I change mine with the engine air filter. It's very easy on my vehicle.

 

[bigi]

Once a year, usually in the spring.

 

[Pacfanweb]

The only correct answer is, "when it needs changing". And the only way you can know that is to pull it and look at it. There's no set time that is correct for everyone. That said, at least once a year if you're going to wing it.

 

[Yuriman]

I changed mine at the 15 year mark. In my car, it was behind a metal bar that needed to be cut. Call it poor design. This reminds me to check it again though.

It wasn't actually that bad; it wasn't noticeably restricting airflow.

 

[Pacfanweb]

I changed mine at the 15 year mark. In my car, it was behind a metal bar that needed to be cut. Call it poor design. This reminds me to check it again though.

It wasn't actually that bad; it wasn't noticeably restricting airflow.

That's probably not too soon.

 

[pauldun170]

Nice thing about our Toyotas is that it's a 1 minute job. Even our Mazda was dead simple.

Guess I should check em since l can't remember what decade it was when I last checked

 

[bradly1101]

Siennas have them just behind the upper glove box. Push a thingy and it's out. I think it's inspect at 30K, but if I was driving through the Mojave with all those dust devils a lot I'd look more often.

My last car didn't have one (that I knew of, nothing in the manual), but I had no need for one I think since I had no car-air related issues. Even the Mojave was no problem headed up to the Sierra and a very long dirt road which was also no problem.

 

[mindless1]

Different environments, different # of miles, different climate (and user preferred settings) fan speeds, different filter size etc all lead to there being no one answer that suits everyone.

Buy a new filter, pull yours out, knock some dust out and decide if it needs replaced. If not then you have the filter for when it does. Judge based on that if it should have been replaced sooner and the interval looking forward. If you're super sensitive to dust then maybe do it every other oil change.

If you are sensitive to dust then vacuuming out the vehicle more often will help that as well as increase the change interval if you have the A/C set to recirculate mode.

 

[mindless1]

^ are you attempting to be a sneaky spammer? It did not work.

 

[eng2d2]

buy one of those home filter and cut them to size.

 

[zanemoseley]

Wanna hear something funny, I didn't realize until a couple weeks ago that my wife's 2005 mustang had a cabin filter, 13 years and 145k later I changed it. It was a pain to get to, you have to remove a vent panel above the firewall and try to get in there. It was pretty nasty but not much worse than my CX5 that had 55k on it. I'm gonna shoot for 30k for here out.

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

 

[WhiteNoise]

I changed mine at 60k and 120k (which I just hit a few weeks ago. I also replaced my fuel tank air filter at those intervals. Yes an air filter for the gas tank lol.

 

[SearchMaster]

Wanna hear something funny, I didn't realize until a couple weeks ago that my wife's 2005 mustang had a cabin filter, 13 years and 145k later I changed it. It was a pain to get to, you have to remove a vent panel above the firewall and try to get in there. It was pretty nasty but not much worse than my CX5 that had 55k on it. I'm gonna shoot for 30k for here out.

Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk

Yeah same with my Focus ST. Getting the old one out isn't so bad because you don't care what happens to it but the new one is very hard to put back in. You basically have to squeeze the edges to make it smaller then hope that it returns to the proper form after you put it back in.