my service is coming up and thought id treat the car to an aftermarket pannel filter. can anyone recommend a good one, and a good place to get it.
hey, iv always liked foam filter like ramair, pipercross, or itg, the ramair gave good results on the rollers over standard, but iv also used k&N and j&r which were also good, but felt the foams were better over time. spose other swear by the cotton ones too, they all better than standard really...
I've got a jetex blue panel filter in mk4 1.8t. Sounds great and its still in great condition 2 years on
paper one for mine out of curiosity those of you with cotton filters, next time you have the airbox apart can you post up whether you see any dust in the top of the airbox or intake pipe? with my pipercross after tens of thosuands of miles it was spot less
Green Cotton filters are among the best flowing - but there's no point having one "just for the sound" - sort your map modified to tell it it's there - then you'll notice.
a filter is suppose to filter. for reference, the surface area of the 1.8t air filter is actually greater than that of my old audi S4, which was making 300+. the same airbox is in the B5 RS4, which left the showroom making 380bhp your paper air filter is absolutely fine and a panel filter will gain you eff all.
You mean when a bit dirty compared to stock. Correct. The main purpose of using an aftermarket filter is over time the filter can out perform ( in terms of airflow) a std paper element when dirty and during service can be washed and resused. I would point to the test carried out some time ago on a 16v vehicle showed that aftermarket panel filters made no difference to engine performance at WOT vs new paper element. Golf 3 16v AIS study
Paper filter technology is quite good these days at minimising pumping losses and keeping filtration efficiency high. While I would agree the ultimate airflow properties of certain drop in elements maybe higher compared to others or a dirty stock filter, these so called benefits will need to be tested on an engine with low AIS loss, between airbox and throttle plate, back to back on the same day w/o air filter and with the new filters in question in order to substantiate such a claim. If there is such a test already done, independently, to prove your claim lets see it. Else as above - naff all gain when all are new.
it's a filter. the paper ones FILTER very well, the K&Ns don't. They may flow more air, but at the expense of how well they filter the grit out. If you want a good performing engine and long life then just use the OEM filter and change it regularly.
This site is full of amazing articles of this nature. http://www.autospeed.com/A_111369/cms/article.html The number of times i've seen them check a standard system and found the filter is flowing really well compared to the rest of the system made me think just to keep the standard one. Even when they tested a filthy filter (like black as night) it still was flowing almost as well as a clean one. havnt seen them check many after market jobbies tho...
