Why do you have to oil some filters? What does oiling them do? What types of filters do you oil and how often?

 

the oiling is only for gauze type filters where the pore sizes are larger than the acceptable penetrating particulate size. The oil acts like a magnet to dirt particles, partly out of real magnetic charge differences and partly cuz it's sticky nasty **** that nothing escapes.

Over oiling the filter is also a massively common cause of MAF reading issues and failures.

You would only oil a K&N or similar construction filter (or an old school oil-bath type metallic filter which we won't discuss here) and only right after it's been cleaned. I would admonish you to NOT clean your K&N filter. They work better as a filter with the more dirty they get. Each time you clean it you reduce it's filtering capability. A pretty heavily clogged K&N flows better than any stock paper type media filter. After 30K miles or so... then you can think about cleaning it.

 

I've wondered about my Steeda filter...it didn't come with any oil. should I clean and oil it from time to time?

 

so actually NOT oiling the K&N filter is better than cleaning it then oiling it? I cleaned it before i came to iraq and did NOT oil it, so i should be good. Thanks Red!

 

no, you have to have oil on it for it work properly, the oil is what traps the finer particles. If you dont have any oil, **** is going to go straight through. the gauze media provides higher flow over paper, but oil is needed to catch the little things the media misses. what redneck was saying is that you dont need to clean your filter all the time and that a freshly cleaned and oiled filter will trap less dirt than a dirty filter, but a dirty k&n will still outflow any paper filter.

 

03dsg nailed it. They must be oiled to work, they usually come from the box properly if not a little overly coated with the oil.

Seriously guys.. RTFM when you buy parts. If you're going to do these things to a 20K plus dollar investment, at least make sure you know before you install what all the changes will be.

 

Thats like rocket science man.

 

the filter was on the car when i bought it, and i didnt know about oiling filters. So i didnt have a manual to read about it, and didnt find much about oiling them on K&N. Thats why i was asking. Its hard to read on stuff in Iraq because of all the filters on the internet too.

 

I'm not griping at you specifically... I'm telling the people who don't fall into your special (and massively sucking ***) situation to take the opportunity to learn before they mod.

When you come back, then I'll gripe at you. You'll of course have to do something worthy of a e-tongue lashing though.

 

lol, yeah the internet out here SUCKS. Slower than dial up too. When i get back ill be at dsl speed and no filters so ill be good when i get home. Thanks for the info though.