Oil Bath Air cleaner

[peewee2you]

Has anyone on the Barn figured out a way to turn the oil bath unit itself into working with a paper style air filter, or cleanable sponge type?

If so how did you do it?

 

[Lawson Cox]

What's the matter with oil to catch the dirt? Inquiring minds want to know. lol

 

[rotorwrench]

The oil bath is the best filter you could ever have so I kinda feel the same way. All you ever have to buy is oil and it doesn't matter if it has ZDDP or anything.

Kerby

 

[Frank Miller]

Larry Teel over on Shoeboxford.com has done this. I believe this is an upgrade as the oil bath air cleaners do not flow as well. He uses a K&N which just needs periodic cleaning and oiling.

 

[John Kennedy]

Nothing filters better than an oil bath, but other filters flow better at high CFM. Just cruising? stay with oil bath. Good on the freeway too.

 

[Merc Cruzer]

I think your question was, has anyone converted an oil bath over to a cartridge filter.....the answer is yes and I use a K&N filter...I now have this one and an origional....I did it just to see if it could be done....it works great.

 

[Lawson Cox]

I think your question was, has anyone converted an oil bath over to a cartridge filter.....the answer is yes and I use a K&N filter...I now have this one and an origional....I did it just to see if it could be done....it works great.

Now, drive it 1000 miles with one, then 1000 miles with the other, under similar conditions, and tell us which one gathers the most crud. lol

 

[rotorwrench]

K&N kind of got the market cornered on the rag paper filters and the animal/mineral oil blend they use to oil them. They charge a tidy sum to buy their oil and filter cleaner products as well. They are very efficent filters but at a price. The rag paper does deteriorate and given time, it will need to be replaced just like a wood pulp paper filter would.

If you use a light weight oil in an oil bath filter, say 10 or 20 SAE grade, it will slow the airflow less than a grade SAE 30 or higher. As was mentioned earlier, the CFM flow rate should be completely adequate for a stock L-head engine. If you want to make K&N wealthy for the small amount of performance gained, then keep buying their products but the oil bath is more efficient through a full 2000 mile run than any type of paper filter. The paper slows down CFM flow pretty quickly after it gets a lot of dirt in it while in the oil bath, the dirt settles to the bottom of the reservoir and the CFM flow stays the same.

My 2 cents.
Kerby

 

[gearhead1952]

I've converted a couple of f1 truck filters, one with a k&n filter ($55) and the other with a napa gold filter ($11). I cut the lid which has the fibers in it off then made a plate from an old chrome air cleaner to seal the top. Pretty easy. You can see the filter when you look in the slots in the front, next one I do I'll cut it further down so you can't tell it has been modified.

 

[Merc Cruzer]

gearhead1952:

That is another reason I like the 53' Merc Aircleaner...you can not see the filter if you convert it.

 

[coolcoupe]

So your saying its better to use a light oil like 10 in a oil bath

 

[Hotrodster]

Actually, oil bath air filters are a very poor filter. You might get by with them on cars driven on modern roads, but I can tell you from a lifetime of farming and running heavy equipment that in very dusty conditions, they are one step above nothing. A 4 cylinder Cat D7, for example, will pick up 10 HP just by switching to a dry filter. I've worked on Cats and farm tractors that had a sticky mixture of dust and oil lining the entire intake manifold right up to the intake valves. If the dust got all the way to the intake valve it also got into the engine. The expected lifetime of Cat engines tripled when they switched to dry filters.