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Typical K&N problem.

WarWagon

Well it hits on 7 of 8...
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One of the few times a new vehicle had me consider calling the hook was a K&N air filter screwing up the engine. All of a sudden after eating lunch one day the engine would start and stall on a 2002 Chevy pickup with the 5.3L V8. I could rev it up and it would stay running, but, the second I took my foot out of it to shift it stalled. Did this 4-5 times and then stayed running. Then randomly would do this for a month. Dealer couldn't find anything.

I was sitting watching the tach after one episode and noticed it was at 450 RPM. I pulled the IAC motor out and found a dust build up that was choking the idle air off, yet, the "touch" part of the valve had kept the dust off. So the ECM would do a "touch" to learn the valve position, but, couldn't measure the dirt and PCV vent crud build up that was choking off the air. I cleaned the IAC and problem went away. Next day I tossed the K&N and put a paper filter back in. Never had the stalling problem with it again.

Pictured is a 2002 GMC Yukon that had one of these K&N gravel screens. Note the clear "touch" area of the pintle. The engine ate this kind of dust from using a K&N. Dusting the rings ... requires an engine rebuild to get this grit embedded in the rings, piston, and cylinder walls out of an engine. Service air filter every 50K-100K miles as you see in the pic is a bad joke.

IMG-20140214-00426.jpg

IMG-20140214-00427.jpg
 
Oh, thinking about it yeah that makes sense. On K&N we learned early: over oil if anything. So getting an oil mist across the sensors will attract dirt to stick to it.

The whole thing is -if not enough oil then fine dust gets through. Older engines have no real issues from my experience. Over 70k miles on my optimizer and no vertical marks.
I pulled down so many engines in the oil company fleet on trucks that hit over 100k a year, and no issues on 6.5 diesels that had over 300k on them. No air sensors to muddy up though.

Cleaning map/maf sensors every filter cleaning would probably help but makes it way not worth it. Especially since AC Delco air filters are so good now.
 
This filter was pretty loaded up for the pics. The other one was K&N factory new (and oiled) with less than 10K on it when it started stalling me out. Dusty driveway however. No real dirt build up when removed. I expected 50K without having to service it from their literature.
 
Oiled filters have consistently the worst results in testing. Will have to go digging through one of my books for the exact number but according to the standard tests paper won at 99%, synthetic fiber core was at 98%, oiled filters were at 90% when oiled correctly, and below 60% when oiled incorrectly.
 
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