Pontiac Owners Club UK

I'm looking on Rock Auto for some air filters for the 3rd and 4th gen. There are some bog standard ones for $3 or some fancy K&N ones for $30. Are the K&N ones actually worth it? They say they're designed to improve HP, torque, acceleration etc... but do they actually do anything over the other ones other than have a logo on the side of them?

Firebreather wrote:I'm looking on Rock Auto for some air filters for the 3rd and 4th gen. There are some bog standard ones for $3 or some fancy K&N ones for $30. Are the K&N ones actually worth it? They say they're designed to improve HP, torque, acceleration etc... but do they actually do anything over the other ones other than have a logo on the side of them?

back in the day when i was messing around bad boying my first decent car (Ford Focus Zetec 1800) i experimented with lots of " gauranteed to add BHP" stuff and that included two types of K&N air filter. One was a panel filter to fit inside the standard airbox, and the other was a full on cold air induction kit with the cone filter and mandrel bent intake pipe.

With the panel filter, i gained nothing on the dyno. With the cone filter and pipework i actually lost around 6bhp and 10 pound feet of torque on the dyno.

As an added insult, me and the other apprentices at work at the time decided to run particulate tests on the K&N filter over the standard paper elements and to our dismay the K&N allowed a higher concentrate of particualte through than the standard element even with the correct application of the K&N filter oil.

Not worth the extra money and we proved it. Save your money and buy a paper standard one and replace it regularly.

in the end i made more torque and BHP with a standard paper filter and a standard airbox from an ST170 Focus in my 1800 zetec.

that's pretty much what I had thought! I'll stick with the cheap $3 ones. Cheers.

Yes that's the best bet!

If only people were aware of the truth! These companies wouldn't exist.

the only ones that are better are the cold air induction gets on very restrictive filter housings, like the tpi 3rd gens that have a single pipe sticking out a grasshopper would struggle to breath through, let alone a 5.7 ltr V8

in terms of open cone style filters i can recommend these:

http://www.fleetfilter.com/filter/wix-a ... 46637.html

but they wont be any good if the CAI is near to the ground as they cant get wet. The filtration however is as good as a normal paper element.

If your intent on having a CAI with a cone filter i believe, although ive not had chance to ever test them, that these guys filters are ok and filter well as they dont rely on oil to improve the filtering of particulates like the K&N.Basically a K&N cannot function as a filter without the filter oil as the cotton medium is not fine enough to retain all particulates. The oil in effect "grabs" onto those finer particulates.

http://www.aemintakes.com/dryflow_air_filters.htm