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Keep Your Engine Safe From Damage And Debris With The Best Car Air Filters
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Air filters are your car’s filtration system that keeps debris, dust, and dirt outside. If some particles break through, they can be a complete nightmare for your engine’s delicate components, potentially setting you back by hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars in repair costs. With time, these filters get clogged as they catch more and more gunk and trash every time you drive your car. If it’s been a while since you’ve had your filters changed, you might be overdue for a replacement.
But most people don’t even know that there’s something called an air filter in their car, let alone which one to buy as a replacement. If this sounds like you, don’t worry! To help you out, we’ve handpicked some of our favorite car air filters you can install in your car in 2023. Let’s begin!
Buying Guide: Car Air Filter
So far, we’ve taken a close look at some of the highest-quality car air filters for a much-needed replacement. While just about any filter would offer much better performance than a clogged one, there are a lot of considerations that go into finding the right filter for your vehicle. Aside from direct factors like your car’s make and model, you should also think about things like the conditions you normally drive in. An off-roading enthusiast, for instance, wouldn’t need the same type of car air filter as an average driver who only wants to get from point A to point B on city roads. We’ve put together this all-encompassing buyer’s guide to help you think everything through before you make your final purchase decision!
What Are the Types of Air Filters?
To find the right air filter replacement for your car, it’s important to know the three major types that are prevalent on the market. These are dry media filters, pleated paper filters, and oiled media filters.
Dry media filters
These filters are made out of materials like expanded foam and woven polymers. The medium consists of irregular-sized holes that correspond to the particulate sizes that they’re designed to filter out. These need a load-up phase before they can reach their highest potential in terms of filtering efficiency.High-quality dry media car air filters can pass for lifetime durability, or they can last for tens of thousands of miles — covering most people’s complete term of owning the car. Reusable variants of dry media filters need to be washed and dried from time to time (like the air filters in your home AC unit), though they’ll save you quite a lot of time since you won’t need to re-oil them.
Pleated paper filters
Pleated paper filters, much like dry media ones, need a load-up phase before they can reach their full potential. Being a cheap, highly effective, and quickly replaceable type of filter, they’re the most popular ones installed in the highest number of city vehicles around the world. These are better than dry media filters in the sense that you don’t have to wash them and wait for them to dry. You simply switch them out with another one in a matter of seconds.You can expect maximum filtering efficiency a few days into the initial installation, which means you’ll have to tolerate a certain level of particulate inhalation in the load-up phase, which is potentially harmful to the car. This could be as quick as a few hundred miles, making it essentially irrelevant. It’s worth it for the peace of mind you get with these pleated paper options.
Oil media filter
If you have a relatively new car that’s perfectly maintained with only 10,000 or so miles on it, you wouldn’t want to harm its inner components by switching to an air filter that requires a load-up phase, right? Even if it inhaled harmful particles for 500 to 1,000 miles of use, that’s still enough to mess with a true car lover’s mind. The same goes for people who have priceless collectibles in their garage with very low mileage on them. In those cases, you can neither buy pleated paper filters nor dry media ones since they both only become highly effective several hundred miles down the line. Your only option is oiled media filters — the oldest-school way out there to trap dust in air filters. These were first used in the 1960s, but their unmatched effectiveness hasn’t let them down, even though other alternatives are more convenient. Even though these sticky, oiled filters provide great efficiency when it comes to filtering out small particles, they have one major downside — re-oiling. Whenever there’s debris build-up blocking the filter, you can either replace it (which is not very cost-effective) or go through the effort of cleaning it and then re-oiling it. Still, it’s the most viable option for those who need optimal performance with minimal damage sustained to the engine due to pollutant inhalation.As long as you clean and re-oil your filters, you can reuse them forever as most of them are considered lifetime installations for your vehicle, which is another significant advantage.
Two Primary Measures of Air Filter Performance
Filter efficacy
Not all filters produce the same results for your car when it comes to blocking out pollutants like dirt and debris. Ideally, a filter shouldn’t let past any particulate matter for maximum safety of your car’s components. For that, filters need to be extremely wide as the most damage-causing particles are about 5 microns in size (10 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair).Most filters come with an efficiency rating of 95 to 99% in terms of being able to block out particles larger than 5 microns. Paper filters, on the other hand, need to load-up for some time before they start to offer that level of filtration performance. Their sub-par performance on the brand-new stage is one of their biggest caveats.
Air filter flow
The flow of an air filter is another key measure of its performance. Think of it this way: you can completely block out all contaminants and dirt particles by simply covering up the front grill with plastic wrap, right? But that would be at the total expense of airflow, which is essential for the engine to function.A filter should not only be fine enough to keep particles out, but it should also feature a smart design that lets sufficient air in. So, when you’re in the market for an air filter replacement, you shouldn’t be sold at the sight of a 99% filter efficiency rating. Instead, you also need to look at horsepower gains, flow rates, and company-claimed performance metrics to be able to see the big picture.With that said, it’s wise to take these numbers with a grain of salt since they’re often biased due to marketing agendas and on tests conducted in ideal conditions. But they still offer a somewhat comparable standard since all brands do the same.
What happens if I don’t change my car's air filter?
If you have an air filter that’s clogged with dirt and you don’t change it, it’ll choke out your engine’s airflow. Being unable to suck up sufficient air supply for the combustion chamber, your engine will start using more gas and less air, leading to a drop in fuel efficiency and performance.
How frequently should I replace my car air filter?
That depends on the type of filter your car has. A filter needs to be cleaned, re-oiled, or replaced every 12,000 miles or so. Following an annual cycle of replacing your car's air filter is also healthy for your vehicle’s wellbeing.
Will a new car air filter improve my car’s performance?
Yes! Depending on how badly you needed the replacement, you’ll feel significant changes in fuel efficiency, smoothness, and throttle response thanks to improved airflow. Since the engine doesn’t need to work as hard anymore, you might also notice cooler running temperatures.
