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aFe's high performance, high flow OE air filter replaces the restrictive factory paper filters and lets your engine breathe better. Paper filters do a good job in keeping dirt out but can clogged easily so that they need to be replaced frequently. Foam filters also clog easily. A washable/reusable, cotton gauze filter like ours allows more airflow and is washable and reusable. Try a simple test. Put a sheet of tissue paper up to your mouth and draw air through it. Now put a sheet of cotton gauze and see the difference. What happened to the tissue paper when you got it wet? What happened to the gauze? Our filters are like that.
With our filters, the engine can breathe a lot better. Have you ever tried running when you had a cold? It's hard when you can't breathe well, right? Your car's engine is the same way. With a restrictive paper filter, it has to struggle to run at its best. When the filter is new and unclogged, it works fine but when dirty, the engine has to struggle. A stock OE paper filter will quickly become clogged as it become dirty.
Our filters are built to let the engine breathe better even as the filter gets dirty. The multiple layers of cotton gauze are sandwiched between two layers of epoxy coated aluminum screen and pleated like a lamp shade. Have you ever looked at cotton gauze under a microscope? It has tiny micro fibers branching out from the strands. When the gauze is oiled like our filters are, these strands attract dirt and dust particles. One or two layers would allow dirt and dust particles to pass through, therefore we stack multiple layers with progressively tighter mesh to catch progressively smaller and smaller particles, as small as 2 microns in size. The aluminum screen holds the layers in place and protects the cotton gauze.
We design our filters differently than other cotton gauze filters. We design our filters to have the tallest pleats that the factory air box will let us. There two reasons for this: 1) Taller pleats mean more filter material to hold the dirt and 2) Taller pleats mean that the pleats can be spaced out more to let more air through.
We also have a different pleat geometry than others. Take a look at ours. See the rounded tips like a dolphin's nose. Others are more triangular and pointed. This rounded design allows the air to flow more efficiently around the tops of the pleats. Not only that, because it is rounded, the pleats aren't tightly pinched and let air flow through the tops and bottom of the pleats. These features allow our filters to breathe better.
We use 100% engineering grade polyurethane which is more flexible and will seal better in today's plastic and fiberglass factory air boxes. To make sure that our filters stand up over the life of your vehicle, we have urethane on all four sides of the filter, not just on the open ends. The polyurethane stands up to high engine temperatures and engine chemicals better that the plastomers that the factory filters use.
Another feature that makes our filters unique is our progressive bump seal on our flat filters. This bump seal made of flexible polyurethane is compressed tightly in the factory air box for a sure leak proof seal even when the factory air box has uneven sealing surface.
Some of our filters, especially for for diesel applications, have expanded metal screens for additional rigidity. In a turbo diesel applications, the turbo will create a vacuum as it spools up and draws air into the engine. If the air filter is clogged, it is possible for a paper filter to be sucked into the turbo. Having a dirty filter sucked into the turbo is not very good for a diesel engine. aFe embeds the expanded metal screen into the polyurethane for a secure lasting fit.
On our round or oval filters, we insure a tight seal against leakage by designing in small ridges that are compressed as the filter is placed on the stock inlet. Being constructed of 100% polyurethane, the flanges and the ridges guarantee excellent fit no matter how often you wash and reuse our filters.
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