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are you guys wet? or dry on AFE intake setups?

Toadster

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#1
LOL - hopefully you get the question...
 

Ecobeast42

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#3
Wet suppossed to pull more air or more dense air
 

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#4
Went with the oiled filter, just based on the specs it pulls more air so that's what I went with.
 

UNBROKEN

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#5
I’ve always used oiled filters so I stuck with what I know.
 

TMac

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#6
Think about this for a second. If you're just talking pressure drop, the only thing that matters about air filters is the surface area (bigger = better), and porosity (more = better). So given a filter of a certain size, how can a filter be less restrictive? The answer is that it must be more porous. Period. . Which means that more contaminants have to be making their way through.

As far as I'm aware, there isn't any magical fairy oil that manages to attract dirt, or "pull more air", no can it "make air more dense". No matter what media we're talking about (paper, cotton gauze,rolls of toilet paper, etc), if you oil it you add density which can hold more contaminants. But once those contaminates begin to accumulate, they and the oil will begin to "choke off" the air channel- same for an un-oiled filter.

The biggest claim to fame for oiled filters is that you can wash them and reuse them. And once you do that, did you oil it too much? Not enough? Who knows? I'll stick with a dry filter and throw it away when it's dirty. Truth is, neither is worth even a couple horsepower, unless incredibly dirty.
 

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TMac

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#8
One can actually create (and it was done in the past, cuz very little is truly new), an effective air filter with a miniscule pressure drop. The concept is to use the velocity of the air traveling through an arc. The circumference (outside area) of the arc being a "wick" embedded with oil. Since objects want to travel in a straight line, the design of using inertia (and/or gravity) allows the air to navigate the passage, but the contaminants being denser end up embedded in outside wall of the media. The intake air never goes through any micron sized holes. Unfortunately, these types of systems are larger, require user cleaning, and aren't convenient. An oiled filter is a hybrid throwback to those systems.
 

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bosephbarking

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#9
One can actually create (and it was done in the past, cuz very little is truly new), an effective air filter with a miniscule pressure drop. The concept is to use the velocity of the air traveling through an arc. The circumference (outside area) of the arc being a "wick" embedded with oil. Since objects want to travel in a straight line, the design of using inertia (and/or gravity) allows the air to navigate the passage, but the contaminants being denser end up embedded in outside wall of the media. The intake air never goes through any micron sized holes. Unfortunately, these types of systems are larger, require user cleaning, and aren't convenient. An oiled filter is a hybrid throwback to those systems.
You can see this idea used to create a 'filter' for the MH-53 helicopter. The metal clamshell in front of the intake has little openings that create vortexes as the air is drawn in. It has an actuator that allows the front to open when unrestricted airflow is required to make power.

Now the outer shell and inner shells are hollow inside. As the dirt and dust get sucked in and thrown out of the air stream a high powered fan sucks the dirt out the rear of the system.

It was designed for the aircraft to operate in desert environments where take off and landings would cause a significant amount of dirt and debris to be ingested. That would damage the engine causing a FOD out.
 

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