guys, how often do you clean the air filter????

(i have a aem sri)

for some bizarre reason...ive been getting crappy mileage these days....

 

My AEM is a dry filter, I blow it out i with an air gun every so often... Its never really needed it, but i've probably put less than 3K on it... They are rather cheap to replace though...

 

Do you guys switch from a Summer to Winter blend of gasoline up there? I always lose a couple mpg when they switch here.

Do you warm up your car in the driveway for any length of time before driving? I give mine the time it takes for it to get through that choppy cold-start idle phase before I start driving, but I don't let it sit and idle in the driveway for 15 minutes or anything.

Have your driving habits changed? Short trips will kill your fuel economy.

 

well i have been allowing my car to idle for around 10mins to let the engine warm up in the mornings... i find that it takes our cars forever to warm up to around 800rpms...


i have no idea if they change gasoline here due to seasons.... my air filter should be clean...cause i installed in end of summer.....
ive driven other cars hard... n it seems like the RA;s have crappy milage... but mine seems to get more noticeable

 

Same thing happens to me when they switch gas. What helps my mileage though is plugging my car in. I save A LOT of gas by doing that and the engine warms up way faster and starts way better. I let it idle for a couple minutes usually, this is just so I can actually shift. If I try driving away without any idle when it's -20 outside, I literally cannot get into 2nd.

 

Captain, what fluid are you using in your tranny?

 

I clean my K&N drop-in every ~800 miles. We have $hitty air....

 

That's a bit excessive.

I clean my cone filter twice per year, once in the spring and once in the fall. That works out to about every 12,000 miles for me.

 

That's about right. I have heard that the K&N style filters (oiled type) work better when they are a bit dirty.

 

i do my every other oil change. why would a dirty air filter work better dont get thet

 

There's your problem man. TOO Long to warm up the car. Once the needle is half way inbetween the C or the needle is jus on 1k RPM i think its warmed up. Cause when u start the car its around 1300 rpm them drops to the 800-900 rpm idle when its totally warmed up.

 

My cleaning interval is a bit excessive but you have to see some of the lorries we have here. I mean, some of them you can't see from behind because of the smoke coming off their exhaust. By 1000 miles, my filter is all black with no evidence of white/red left, it's stupid, but that's the way it is around here. Everyone's so up for reducing pollution, as long as it's someone else doing to reducing.

 

Talking about K&N drop in filters how much oil spray is recommended on it after cleaning in order not to coat the maf sensors? I'm sure visually one can determine wether or not theres too much however, i was wondering if someone had a technique such as spraying from a foot for 4 seconds or just swiping past it etc..

 

I just do what it says on the instrutions. The oil has a red tint to it so you can see what you've already covered. I do one even coat of the entire filter from about 6-8" away.

 

Is that really the case? My understanding is that the temperature gauge is the coolant temp not the oil temp, and that oil temp takes quite a bit longer to actually warm up. I also want to stress this is just my simple understanding of things but I was under the impression that the oil temp was the temp we needed to make sure was warm prior to driving it aggressively in order to prevent wear. An engine thats been completely warmed up (my assumption) would provide better mileage than one which wasnt. Now, whether or not its better to warm it up or just drive it gently is probably another can of worms (or another dead horse to beat).