K&N or NOT?

[starboy0720]

Hello BadForeman members...im new to this utility ATV thing, from what i heard, it isnt good to put a K&N air filter on a utility bike (i personally called BULLSH*T on that one)...i just want some feed back on the K&N...good or bad...thanks


Darren

[Jake]

We tried a few on the trucks at work due to the possibility of a signifigant fuel savings on the big (well, medium really) diesel engines. They shorten the service life of a diesel engine signifigantly and in very short order the turbo impeller fins look "sandblasted".

One in three times I'd find one in a passenger car back at the Mobil station, the whole intake tract would be dusty on the inside. I don't know the service history of any of them, I doubt that many ever saw service if I wasn't performing it, what I did was done carefully and correctly, but I never installed them either, so somewhere somebody else's grubby paws were on it too. Even so, not good from where I stand. You shouldn't have to be afraid to handle an air filter for fear of damaging it. That little fine grit that gets in is so light it'll stick to the oil film on anything, including a cylinder wall, it'll eat away at a turbo impeller, and generally will wreck an engine ten times as fast as larger stuff, like grains of sand or something of that nature that'll keep on going and pass right through with minimal if any damage.

You can put a pre-filter on the ATV filters, but at that point, the flow gains of a gause filter over a foam one seem to be pretty much negated.

Maybe, and I'm really not sold, otherwise they'd measure and advertise the filtering efficiency when they're NEW, not after 50,000 miles, OR they'd measure the FLOW after 50,000 miles instead of when they're NEW, but maybe they really are as good as they say when they're new. If we say that they are that good just for argument's sake, if they're so fragile that they fail (or get damaged) so easily and so regularly, and there's NO visual indications of one being any worse than the other when they do fail (or get damaged), then even if it is a touch better flowing when it's new, I still don't want it.

I know a lot of people think differently, but that's my take on it.