Magic Man
Registered User
There have been some discussions here about air filters, and although many people have some things correct, there has also been much "urban legend" type talk flying around too.
Now I have myself always had a fairly good working knowledge of filter designs and functions. I wanted to get into the real tech stuff to see what I myself may have had wrong in regard to filters and their designs.
So to try to get the real 411 on this topic I called and spoke to Jason at GREEN FILTER today for over an hour about this topic. Jason is one of the design team engineers at GREEN FILTER and also worked on the NMN designed Spyder filters.
We always knew from past uses that GREEN FILTER made a top quality product and is the reason NMN had GREEN FILTER design and manufacturer it's line of Spyder air filters. But I wanted to be able to share with all of you the reasons behind our choice to use GREEN FILTER as the maker of the NMN line of air filters.
So, here is real skinny about air filters.
Microns, Microns, Microns......
There has been much talk here about micron size filter capabilities, yet nobody seemed to know just what was good or bad in this regard.
The industry wide standard or "benchmark" for air filters is 5 microns.
Particles smaller than this are industry accepted as being too small to cause any motor wear or damage and is the OEM standard all compainies use in this regard. This is the standard used for all 3 types of common filter material which is paper, cloth and foam. Their "capture percentage" is measured against this 5 micron size.
Filters such as GREEN FILTER or K&N use a cotton gauze material held between two layers of a wire mesh.
HOWEVER...Not all the cotton material is the same.
The tightness of the weave plays a large part in both the materials effective filtration and also its cost.
This is very similar to the "thread count" in the weave of your bed sheets. The higher the count the tighter the weave, but also the higher the cost for them as well.
Now someone posted what K&N said someplace about their filters 5 micron "capture percentage." I asked Jason about this percentage K&N posts and was told that K&N uses a (to be 2010 PC here) much "more cost conscious" and more open weave in it's material and therefore has this "capture percentage" (I think the lay person term here is cheaper gauze)
The gauze material used in the construction of a GREEN FILTER is many times the thread count of a K&N and has a 5 times higher cost per yard than the more open gauze used in many of the other mesh filters now being sold.
The "capture percentage" for a GREEN FILTER with it's high thread count tighter weaved gauze is 99.1 to 99.4 percentage of the 5 micron industry standard.
I also reconfirmed what I alwys knew which is that GREEN FILTER filters meet or exceed ALL OEM air fliter requirements, and will not cause any warranty issues when used in a new unit.
Something else I found out today is GREEN FILTER is the OEM supplier for all Chrysler MOPAR high performance factory filters and are standard equipment in all the FORD SALEN Mustangs and trucks as well.
GREEN also supplies the worlds #1 engine manufacturer (Briggs and Stratton) with it's line of "extreme duty filters." Briggs and Stratton makes more engines world wide than any other company, something I did not know myself.
So, why no filter will catch every spec of dirt 100%, the 99.1% to 99.4 "capture percentage" that a GREEN FILTER does is far and above the industry OEM standard for a paper filter which is 94%.
It does this all this while flowing from 33% to almost 50% more air to your engine, as well as being totally servicable and reusable.
So, as in anything else in life filters can and will be different and at different "price points" but with you now knowing the how and whys of what goes in to these filters I hope you can better appreciate why that is.
Like Jason told me today, GREEN FILTER does not want to be the biggest filter company, nor sell the cheapest or most units, as that's not their goal or business plan.
They just want to make and sell the best filter they can, at a fair price for the level of quality and performance it delivers.
Being in the business myself, I know I'd rather have a product like this from a company like this everytime. It might cost me a bit more than trying to save a few bucks with a lower cost option, but I'd rather spend it and get all the performance and protection I can. Because over the life of the filter the small increase in price boils down to fractions of a penny per mile.
MM
Now I have myself always had a fairly good working knowledge of filter designs and functions. I wanted to get into the real tech stuff to see what I myself may have had wrong in regard to filters and their designs.
So to try to get the real 411 on this topic I called and spoke to Jason at GREEN FILTER today for over an hour about this topic. Jason is one of the design team engineers at GREEN FILTER and also worked on the NMN designed Spyder filters.
We always knew from past uses that GREEN FILTER made a top quality product and is the reason NMN had GREEN FILTER design and manufacturer it's line of Spyder air filters. But I wanted to be able to share with all of you the reasons behind our choice to use GREEN FILTER as the maker of the NMN line of air filters.
So, here is real skinny about air filters.
Microns, Microns, Microns......
There has been much talk here about micron size filter capabilities, yet nobody seemed to know just what was good or bad in this regard.
The industry wide standard or "benchmark" for air filters is 5 microns.
Particles smaller than this are industry accepted as being too small to cause any motor wear or damage and is the OEM standard all compainies use in this regard. This is the standard used for all 3 types of common filter material which is paper, cloth and foam. Their "capture percentage" is measured against this 5 micron size.
Filters such as GREEN FILTER or K&N use a cotton gauze material held between two layers of a wire mesh.
HOWEVER...Not all the cotton material is the same.
The tightness of the weave plays a large part in both the materials effective filtration and also its cost.
This is very similar to the "thread count" in the weave of your bed sheets. The higher the count the tighter the weave, but also the higher the cost for them as well.
Now someone posted what K&N said someplace about their filters 5 micron "capture percentage." I asked Jason about this percentage K&N posts and was told that K&N uses a (to be 2010 PC here) much "more cost conscious" and more open weave in it's material and therefore has this "capture percentage" (I think the lay person term here is cheaper gauze)
The gauze material used in the construction of a GREEN FILTER is many times the thread count of a K&N and has a 5 times higher cost per yard than the more open gauze used in many of the other mesh filters now being sold.
The "capture percentage" for a GREEN FILTER with it's high thread count tighter weaved gauze is 99.1 to 99.4 percentage of the 5 micron industry standard.
I also reconfirmed what I alwys knew which is that GREEN FILTER filters meet or exceed ALL OEM air fliter requirements, and will not cause any warranty issues when used in a new unit.
Something else I found out today is GREEN FILTER is the OEM supplier for all Chrysler MOPAR high performance factory filters and are standard equipment in all the FORD SALEN Mustangs and trucks as well.
GREEN also supplies the worlds #1 engine manufacturer (Briggs and Stratton) with it's line of "extreme duty filters." Briggs and Stratton makes more engines world wide than any other company, something I did not know myself.
So, why no filter will catch every spec of dirt 100%, the 99.1% to 99.4 "capture percentage" that a GREEN FILTER does is far and above the industry OEM standard for a paper filter which is 94%.
It does this all this while flowing from 33% to almost 50% more air to your engine, as well as being totally servicable and reusable.
So, as in anything else in life filters can and will be different and at different "price points" but with you now knowing the how and whys of what goes in to these filters I hope you can better appreciate why that is.
Like Jason told me today, GREEN FILTER does not want to be the biggest filter company, nor sell the cheapest or most units, as that's not their goal or business plan.
They just want to make and sell the best filter they can, at a fair price for the level of quality and performance it delivers.
Being in the business myself, I know I'd rather have a product like this from a company like this everytime. It might cost me a bit more than trying to save a few bucks with a lower cost option, but I'd rather spend it and get all the performance and protection I can. Because over the life of the filter the small increase in price boils down to fractions of a penny per mile.
MM
Last edited:
hyea:
