So wait.... K&N air filters really just lots more dirt in your engine?

[LTC8K6]

I've gotta say, this thread stirred up quite a discussion at work today. A little about the filter, but mostly our surprise and disgust at the second-grade level of leadership on this board. This is un-believable...



You're a Moderator? You're obviously doing a FINE job moderating this discussion. Thanks for remaining impartial and giving all parties an opportunity to speak their opinion.



The board administrator posted this??? I read the post which you claim to be "marketing", I don't see a single piece of advertising in it anywhere. Are you just upset that they aren't registered as a vendor and contributing money to "your" board? You tout yourself as being an "informed" person...but all I hear when you speak are the sounds of flatulence.

Nearly everyone who has posted on this thread obviously has some kind of ax to grind against K&N. On what kind of FACTS are you basing your opinions, which you are crusading so gallantly to defend? The link to some test you found online? Ooooh, if you found it online, that MUST mean it's true! Have any of you actually seen a hard copy of the test results? For all you know, they could have been made up!

Do yourself, and all of us with 2 brain cells left, a favor. Take the black curtain off the window, put on some clothes, turn off your World of Warcraft game, and step outside for a while and breathe in some fresh air. The world is a bigger place than Al Gore's Internet.

It simply doesn't make any sense to use a K&N or other brand similar filter on a street car, and no amount of data from a lab is ever going to change that.

Race car, sure. Heavily modded car, sure go ahead and use one. Not necessarily a K&N one, though.

Street car, stick with the OEM type paper filter, it's better than an oiled gauze filter for a street car.

It's really just common sense. No marketing or bashing necessary.

 

[Throckmorton]

I've gotta say, this thread stirred up quite a discussion at work today. A little about the filter, but mostly our surprise and disgust at the second-grade level of leadership on this board. This is un-believable...



You're a Moderator? You're obviously doing a FINE job moderating this discussion. Thanks for remaining impartial and giving all parties an opportunity to speak their opinion.



The board administrator posted this??? I read the post which you claim to be "marketing", I don't see a single piece of advertising in it anywhere. Are you just upset that they aren't registered as a vendor and contributing money to "your" board? You tout yourself as being an "informed" person...but all I hear when you speak are the sounds of flatulence.

Nearly everyone who has posted on this thread obviously has some kind of ax to grind against K&N. On what kind of FACTS are you basing your opinions, which you are crusading so gallantly to defend? The link to some test you found online? Ooooh, if you found it online, that MUST mean it's true! Have any of you actually seen a hard copy of the test results? For all you know, they could have been made up!

Do yourself, and all of us with 2 brain cells left, a favor. Take the black curtain off the window, put on some clothes, turn off your World of Warcraft game, and step outside for a while and breathe in some fresh air. The world is a bigger place than Al Gore's Internet.

The data proving that a K&N filter with its bigger pores filters worse has been posted. Where is your ISO 5011 data?

 

[Zenmervolt]

The data proving that a K&N filter with its bigger pores filters worse has been posted. Where is your ISO 5011 data?

The same place as his head...

 

[PricklyPete]

I almost feel bad for K&N as a company if Dr. Cooter is an actual paid employee of K&N. They make the company come off as ridiculously juvenile.

The product has merit for certain uses, but clearly not for everyone like they would like you to believe. The lackluster response by KNFilter and the absolutely childish response by Dr. Cooter makes me never want to buy a K&N product ever.

 

[mb]

http://www.google.com/search?q=KNFilters+%22There+is+much+misleading+information+on+the+web"

Ouch.

 

[PricklyPete]

http://www.google.com/search?q=KNFilters+"There+is+much+misleading+information+on+the+web"

Ouch.

Oh wow...that guy gets around.

 

[LTC8K6]

He's a spammer too?

 

[mb]

Even more results under different user names.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...leading+information+on+the+web"&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

 

[Bignate603]

You would have thought that K&N would have figured out that their condescending responses without any real substance are doing more harm than good to their public relations.

If they wanted to change the perception of the public they need to publish real numbers.

 

[Zenmervolt]

You would have thought that K&N would have figured out that their condescending responses without any real substance are doing more harm than good to their public relations.

If they wanted to change the perception of the public they need to publish real numbers.

The issue for K&N is that the real numbers are all there in the Spicer report. Rather than taking the high road and marketing the product for what it is, a washable filter that sacrifices filtration ability for airflow and is chiefly useful only in modified engines and trusting the consumers to understand the inherent trade-offs, they are relying up shady marketing and astroturfing.

This is a shame because, as a racing part, the filters are actually quality parts. It's just that, as with other parts like choke-less carbs, high-lift cams, racing slicks, and race-compound brake pads, K&N filters are not the ideal compromise for street use.

ZV

 

[Pliablemoose]

LOL at the posts by K&N Inc...

Back in the day, the first thing I did to my motorcycles was put in a jet kit, aftermarket exhaust, and K&N filters to defeat the EPA settings, then I started putting K&N filters in my cars.

Then I read some oil analysis results and went back to the paper filters in modern vehicles with engine control systems.

If K&N filters were worth a flying fuck, the OEM's would install them at the factory, another $30 for 1/2 mpg is nothing to them, and as competitive as OEM's are, don't you think they'd make them a standard?

Fuck K&N and your damage control crap on the net.

The public isn't as gullible as you all think.

 

[DivideBYZero]

LULZ! This thread delivers!

 

[Pliablemoose]

Actually, we're screwing up, let's all buy & install K&N filters in our daily drivers after an oil analysis, run the K&N's for a few years, run another oil analysis, and do a tear down and start a class action lawsuit against K&N, see if we can sue them out of business and profit.

Who's up for it? Let's pick the cheapest car that K&N makes a filter for...


The other interesting thing, who wants to bet K&N knew about the poor filtering & accelerated engine wear before anyone else did, and knowingly has sold their product to the public?

I'm out several MAF sensors after using K&N filters on cars before I got smart & gave them up, so I already have damages.

 

[Meghan54]

The other interesting thing, who wants to bet K&N knew about the poor filtering & accelerated engine wear before anyone else did, and knowingly has sold their product to the public?

Well, there is a reason why K&N also makes foam prefilters that fit onto/over most of their "regular" filters.

 

[Throckmorton]

I posted this thread on Expedition Portal http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37174

There are some good responses like this one:

I like this bit:
K&N has a legal and moral responsibility to the consumer....

That's an interesting statement, given that it says in the warranty fine print that if you buy one of their filters that they make for dirt bikes, then ride that dirt bike off-road, it will void the filter warranty.

 

[Gillbot]

I've gotta say, this thread stirred up quite a discussion at work today. A little about the filter, but mostly our surprise and disgust at the second-grade level of leadership on this board. This is un-believable...



You're a Moderator? You're obviously doing a FINE job moderating this discussion. Thanks for remaining impartial and giving all parties an opportunity to speak their opinion.



The board administrator posted this??? I read the post which you claim to be "marketing", I don't see a single piece of advertising in it anywhere. Are you just upset that they aren't registered as a vendor and contributing money to "your" board? You tout yourself as being an "informed" person...but all I hear when you speak are the sounds of flatulence.

Nearly everyone who has posted on this thread obviously has some kind of ax to grind against K&N. On what kind of FACTS are you basing your opinions, which you are crusading so gallantly to defend? The link to some test you found online? Ooooh, if you found it online, that MUST mean it's true! Have any of you actually seen a hard copy of the test results? For all you know, they could have been made up!

Do yourself, and all of us with 2 brain cells left, a favor. Take the black curtain off the window, put on some clothes, turn off your World of Warcraft game, and step outside for a while and breathe in some fresh air. The world is a bigger place than Al Gore's Internet.

So, in other words, K&N has no actual response to the legitimate criticisms raised and has instead attempted to astroturf this discussion. That really makes you look good.

If, as you claim, it's not pre-packaged marketing, why did a user with the same user name post a nearly identical post at approximately the same time on the same day on another forum as well?

http://www.driveaccord.net/forums/showthread.php?p=579574#post579574

Oh yeah, and let's not forget the google results that come back when you use that search string:

http://www.google.com/search?q=KNFilters+"There+is+much+misleading+information+on+the+web"

"Don't see a single piece of advertising in it" my arse.

Please do let the door hit you on the way out.

Zenmervolt - AnandTech Moderator

You would think a person coming in to defend would have a better reply than to slam the mods and admins here. I mean, shut us up with data instead of slinging lame 5th grade insults.

I don't need test reports online, I ran my own tests on MY CAR. I saw the results with my own eyes. As ZV already stated, they are a good product when applied correctly but preying on the uninformed then touting your "moral responsibility" to the consumer is a joke.

 

[Rio Rebel]

You don't really understand unless you use K&N filters with a Bose stereo attached by Monster cables, while drinking Johnny Walker blue label.

 

[Evadman]

I am very disappointed I missed all the fun while I was on vacation without internet access. That will teach me to step away.

Thankfully, almost everything that needed to be said has already been said. I just wanted to point out that the particulate being passed has more to do with the amount of wear caused than the amount of particulate. Silica is just about the only material that is hard enough to score all the materials in an engine, so as long as silica is stopped, the engine can eat pretty much anything else. 'everything else' is going to be crushed between the rings and cylinder wall whereas the silica will become embedded in the cylinder wall or rings, polish valve seats, wear guides, etc as soon as the particulate is bigger than the lubrication thickness. That puts boundary layer lubrication (valve guides and the 2 compression rings) at the top of the scale for 'most likely to be damaged' by passing too much particulate.

Now that I think of it, I would be interested to see how a oil impregnated foam filter (like small engines use) fair in the ISO 5011 test, assuming one could be made large enough to flow 350 CFM without collapsing under vacuum in real world conditions. I can't remember ever seeing a small engine with top end damage while the filter was still intact in the decades I have been working on them.

Way back when I was in auto in HS I remember doing our own test on a oiled gauze filter at school. We did it just to piss someone off who bought one for his brand new car (parent bought of course) and prove he was going to wreck his engine. We took his old filter and dumped a handfull of blasting sand on it and shook it to prove the filter stopped the sand. Then we dumped a bunch on the oiled gauze filter filter. Unfortunately, that got blasting sand all over the floor that we then had to clean up.

Oiled cotton filters have their place, as has been said. When you do rebuilds after every few races (or a season longest case) you want to flow a serious amount of air in the smallest space witht he lightest weight. To do that, you need a large expance of paper filter or a much smaller expanse of oiled cotton; tough choice. You aren't worried about how the engine is going to perform 10,000 miles later as 10,000 miles is a decade in the future if you are a dirt track racer, or the next season if you are in NASCAR.

You aren't doing yearly rebuilds on your daily driver. If you are, then more power to you, bust out the oiled air filer, grab a bypass oil filter if you want to stop anything that gets past the rings, and go to town.

 

[steven0100]

I installed a K&N filter in my 1986 Honda Accord and after 16 years and 250,000 miles, the only thing that was right with the car was the engine. Rust was taking its toll on the rest of the car. The engine ran like the day I bought the car. I did not notice any power increase over the paper filter.

I installed a K&N in a 1997 Pontiac Grad Prix and I noticed that I didn't have to push the gas pedal down as much as the paper filter to get the same amount of power during initial acceleration. I didn't notice much change in power at higher RPM's.

My present car is a 1999 Honda Accord with 105,000 miles and 11 years on it. Not one problem to mention with the installed K&N. I did not notice any power increase.

The Spicer report was very interesting and compelling. I should mention that when the K&N is removed, the throat of the intake manifold is clean as a whistle.

So, for me, the jury is still out on this issue.

 

[Hecubus28]

First post in a computer forum defending K&N filters?

I installed a K&N filter in my 1986 Honda Accord and after 16 years and 250,000 miles, the only thing that was right with the car was the engine. Rust was taking its toll on the rest of the car. The engine ran like the day I bought the car. I did not notice any power increase over the paper filter.

I installed a K&N in a 1997 Pontiac Grad Prix and I noticed that I didn't have to push the gas pedal down as much as the paper filter to get the same amount of power during initial acceleration. I didn't notice much change in power at higher RPM's.

My present car is a 1999 Honda Accord with 105,000 miles and 11 years on it. Not one problem to mention with the installed K&N. I did not notice any power increase.

The Spicer report was very interesting and compelling. I should mention that when the K&N is removed, the throat of the intake manifold is clean as a whistle.

So, for me, the jury is still out on this issue.

 

[sdifox]

First post in a computer forum defending K&N filters?

Already reported :awe: