Air filters

[thornogson]

Hi guy's,
what is the best air filter to put on the Essex engine. Are the after market filters better than the Ford item, even though they will be drawing in hot air. Would it be better to stick with the larger ford filter housing and duct it to the front gril?

[davidy]

This is a tricky area. If you have a standard (ish) engine then I would go for either a K&N element inside the Ford Housing or a K&N filter. Pipercross and ITG type filters are not as good as they can get squashed against the bonnet reducing their efficiency.

If you have a trick engine note that some performance K&Ns are too tall. I had a special 1 off K&N filter made up at K&N, It was low but had extra deep vanes and would breathe to a calculated 235bhp. I supplied top and bottom plates, a man at K&N made the filter.

Does that help

davidy

[millard]

I had a 3.1 200+bhp engine running a standard ford airfilter housing, I cut the inlet tube back to gain maximum diameter and ran heat resistant ducting to infront of the radiator where I mounted the biggest cone filter I could find. It worked really well at maintaining cold air flow + reduced petrol evaporation on very hot days.

As Adrian will likely tell you, it is probably going to cause carb icing on colder days, but it didn't present me with any issues.

Millard

[thornogson]

Just an update, I decided to keep the standard ford housing with a replacement k&N filter inside it. I altered the shaped inlet pipe to a 51mm round dia pipe and ducted this to a rectangular inlet attached to the grill. I will not know how effective it is until the spring as I have had to remove the ducting from the filter housing as this very cold weather was causing it to cut out.

[ATE399J]

Have a look here.....www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=179905&f=34&h=0