Changing Air Filter

almillar

Your friend presuambly drives in a desert and gets lots of sand in his air filter.
darkmatter - have a look at the official stats before you tell people what MPG their own car gets!

JustinR1979

To be fair some of those figures can be up to 50% out

Post_Saviour

I wouldn't let you friend give you any more information about cars!

Changing the air filter at the normal service intervals is probably more often than enough, I doubt you'll notice much at all if anything though.

Did you know you can just clean or hoover it, or easily replace it yourself for £10 - £20 anyway? They're normally just clipped in an easily accessible black plastic box at the front of the engine bay.

BeenThroughItAll

Post_Saviour wrote: »

I wouldn't let you friend give you any more information about cars!

Changing the air filter at the normal service intervals is probably more often than enough, I doubt you'll notice much at all if anything though.

Did you know you can just clean or hoover it, or easily replace it yourself for £10 - £20 anyway? They're normally just clipped in an easily accessible black plastic box at the front of the engine bay.

You'll be lucky to be able to achieve much by vacuuming an air filter. Much of the trapped dirt will be in the paper folds which would be a !!!!!! to clean with a vacuum attachment. Only way to do it is blow it out with an airline, which is what I do every 6K miles when I change the oil and filter, with a replacement every 12K at every other oil change.

C_Mababejive

darkmatter101 wrote: »

No way will a 1.8 petrol civic do 46 mpg

OP,,just take the air filter out and get max mpg.

I have a 1.8 petrol civic and bearing in mind the vagaries of on board fuel computers, when i first got it i went on a long run of about 200 miles each way. I must have been being careful and timid but the fuel meter registered 55mpg !

Now that ive got used to driving it, it regularly runs between 46-48. I just did an oil change and on a recent run about 40 miles each way, it settled at 50.

Mind you, im quite a laid back driver and i do play the fuel efficiency arcade game on the dash..

Iceweasel

C_Mababejive wrote: »

OP,,just take the air filter out and get max mpg.

Now there is an interesting fuel additive mpg booster - wasps, flies, and leaves - not to mention dust and grit.

When you take the air-filter out have a look at all the crud and crap that it has prevented entering the engine - then think what damage it would do if that lot was ingested into the cylinders.

mcpitman

C_Mababejive wrote: »

OP,,just take the air filter out and get max mpg.

Worst advice ever... do not do this.

This must be a joke right....

redux

People who do a higher mileage and expect to keep the car for some time might consider a K&N filter, which is rather more expensive but lasts 100,000 miles or more and can be washed and re-oiled at 50 to 100,000 mile intervals.

JustinR1979

redux wrote: »

People who do a higher mileage and expect to keep the car for some time might consider a K&N filter, which is rather more expensive but lasts 100,000 miles or more and can be washed and re-oiled at 50 to 100,000 mile intervals.

And filters 10 times less efficiently than the stock item - people may say it's only 1.8% less....
But, 99.8% for stock against 98% for the k&n is 10 times worse in my book.
Also, there is no pressure drop between a new stock filter and no filter at all - so that demonstrate the (lack of) restriction a stock filter has.

BeenThroughItAll

K&N sounds like it makes sense, but few people actually keep their car for 100K miles. I change my filter every 12K or so, it costs me less than 7 quid on average. A K&N would cost me 70 quid.