rev up your engines, today I'm going to talk about the best air filters in the
world for your car and why they are, and to explain it all correctly you're gonna
have a little history lesson, in the early 1900's to the early 1930s
companies like Henry Ford, they had water bath air filters where water was the
filtration unit, the air would be sucked into a giant filtration unit they had
water in it, and it would also have things like metal shavings any kind of
rough material, and the air would come in go through the water and the shaving
materials, then be sucked into the engine, needless to say you had to change the water
all the time, if it ran dry it would be sucking dirt into the engine, they were kind of a
pain to clean, and they didn't filter all that well, and as old as I am that was
before my time, when I was a young mechanic in the 60s there were still
some old cars that are what are called oil bath air filters, it was the same thing
only used oil instead of water as a filtration, now these oil bath filtration
units are pretty big, they take up a lot of space, and the oil filtered a lot better
than the water, but same thing goes, you had to change the oil all the time and it
was even worse to clean than the water ones, because it's based on oil, so it was
a very messy thing to do, and it was inconvenient, you had to keep taking it
apart and cleaning them so, in the swing of 1960s they started to put those round
paper air filters in cars, now the reason they were round is because most cars had
carburetors that were round on the top and the round would fit around to filter
the air, and eventually they went to rectangular inside boxes, cause they
could get more surface area that way rather than just a thin round circle, the
idea is to get the most filtration area to get the most dust out and dirt out
for the longest period of time, now even today some large off-road vehicles like
huge construction equipment, it uses an oil bath system because there's so much
dust, the oil is good at getting rid of the dust, even a paper filter is gonna
fill up with dust really fast, say if you're in a desert or lately here in
Houston where we've had this African dust clouds that have been
covering the city for days, but most of the time we don't live in a dust storm
and the paper filters are actually the best, because even if it's somewhat dusty
you can always knock the dust off or get a vacuum and suck the dust off, once they
become impregnated with a lot of dirty stuff you got to replace them, but for
overall performance these paper filters actually are the best of both worlds, so
of course you're gonna ask what are the best paper filters, well unfortunately
its OEM the Original Equipment Manufacturer
because they make them so that they filter the best, get the best gas mileage
and here's a comparison to show you what I'm talking about, this is a Toyota OEM
air filter, see how many pleats there are there's a lot of filtration area and I'm
now comparing it to an aftermarket filter that fits the Toyota, but you can
see there's much less pleats, there's not as much surface area, it's not gonna last
as long, and it's not gonna filter as well
they're often a reason that the cheaper air filters cost less, there's
less material on them, it's often a cheaper material, it doesn't filter as
well, so really for the best filter you want to use OEM filters, now you don't
have to buy them at the dealer, there's lots of other places that sell them, but
you want to make sure that they're quality and they're not a cheaper filter
so what if they cost less, if you have to change them all the time or if you
don't change them they clog up faster, you get worse gas mileage and you're
wasting money, I mean really look at the difference, here's the original
equipment, here's the aftermarket one you can see, this is going to filter a lot
more than this chintzy little thing it hardly has any paper at all in it
compared to the factory one, and I know people are gonna ask, what about these
aftermarket ones like K&N, and look what it says, designed to increase horsepower
and acceleration, washable, reusable, lifetime product, now these K&N
filters are good filters, they have cloth based filtering and there's oil in them
so they filter really well, but since their oil impregnated, heavy dust will
clog them up really fast, then you got to clean them, now there's a kit for that
here it is, but you have to clean it, dry it, oil it, and put it in, and if you put
too much oil in it, it can actually ruin your MAF sensor, the MAF sensor many cars
have what's called a hot MAF sensor, and so this wire gets real hot to
burn impurities, and if that oil gets on it, it will burn the mass sensor out, so
it's something you're really got to be careful about in those cars, so really
contrary to lots of claims, nothing beats an OEM filter for a lot of filtration
area, long life, and quality filtration, really there's nothing to beat it on an
average car, and since its mechanic Monday, I'm giving away in OEM air filter
to one of the viewers, to have a chance to win, place a clean non-offensive
comment on the youtube comments below, and the winner will be chosen randomly
by computer to get an OEM air filter, so their car can run smoothly and not be
clogged up with dirt, so if you never want to miss another one of my new car
repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!