Air Filter Minder

[Ramtough]

I now have about 26K miles on my truck. The filter minder on the air cleaner is still telling me that I have 100% of the filter life remaining. Could this possibly be true?



Most of the truck's operation is over the highway with about 20% in town driving. It has never been off road or on dirt roads to speak of.

 

[BK]

I have a 99 with about 26K in it, and my minder is telling me I'm at 100% too.



From past conversations I've read here on TDR, you may have a restricted filter but if your not doing some hard hauling and really producing the power and some WOT, you maynot get a sign from the minder that the filter is dirty (or dirty enough to make the sender register with a light foot on the go pedal).



I know I've done some heavy pulls up steep grades with WOT... so I thought I would have seen something on the minder... but nope.



I buy the geno's filter kit. I'm on my last oil and fuel filter. So I'm just gonna change the air filter anyway when I do the fuel filter next month. With the heat and temp transitions, I'm sure the foam layer and filter elements break down anyway. Cheap insurance and at the price of the genos filter kit (vs cummins or the stealer), it and a fuel filter are "free" anyway.



One last thought... . Also check all your breather hoses and turbo hoses to make sure they are good and tight so that no other source of fresh air is being drawn from. Again, I've read threads here on TDR of the post turbo hoses being loose.

 

[dresslered]

Listen to your Filter Minder

I've got over 35k on my first filter with the Minder still showing 100% Cummins actually recommends that you do not change the filter until the Minder tells you so. These things were designed to handle dirty environments, and it may take quite some time to gunk them up with regular road driving. They also said that a dirty filter is a better filter (the dirt particles actually add to the filtering). I've got a brand new one from Geno's waiting in the garage but it's not getting used until the minder says so.



P. S. BK has some good suggestions on some checks.

 

[The patriot]

My filter minder said all was fine, until I put the 370 injectors in, then adjusted the boost to 39 psi!!:--)

Shortly thereafter I went to the BHAF.

Eric

 

[JPittman]

David,



Looks like you spoke to the same Cummins Tech that I did, I got the same answer a few months ago. When I got off the phone I wondered, but it does make sense.

And thanks for the answers on the Tork-Lift system. It helped alot.

 

[BK]

re: what dresslered, JPittman wrote...

I've read elsewhere and agree with what they wrote.



My only thought is... .

... I've got the filter from the geno's kit, the clean new filter has the required filter specifications... and I wont find out that the filter clogged while I'm up in the mountains somewhere. After 3 years I figured it can't be a waste of money to change it.



I check my filter last spring when I changed my fuel filter. The air filter was real dirty... Havent looked into the box this year yet.



Most of my milage is towing and off road as well.



re: w hat The patriot wrote. .

makes a bunch of sense!





-Bob

 

[GFoley]

I, like others, did not see mine move until I added injectors. It finally moved A LOT about 55k. Swapped out, saw a little movement up to 90k. I pulled the "tube" from the airbox to the inner fender and haven't seen it move a bit. I guess I'm getting a bit more flow into the airbox. BHAF is out there waiting for me sometime soon.

 

[LSMITH]

I have gotten about 40K miles out of my filters, and the dust here with the construction season from thaw till snow is heavy. What I have noticed is that the filterminder will not move forever, then you see it is at 30% then 100% in a very short period of time. I would guess that from the first movement to the 100% indication has been less than 5000 miles for me.

 

[BillGotthelf]

I agree with LSmith. I live in a community with 500 miles of sandy shellrock roads. Mix with h2o and it turns into cement. Using the stock filter elements the filter minder would go from ok to almost 100 % in a week during the dry season. We also rely upon them with all our heavy equipment too.

 

[DNelson]

I think mine's stuck

Mine's been at about 35% for a couple of years now. I tried resetting it, but no luck. Has anyone else been able to reset theirs, or can you only do that when it becomes 100% restricted?

 

[dresslered]

You should be able to reset yours at any time, however, mine has always been in the reset mode.

 

[BK]

dresslered is right... . I was wondering if mine even worked... so I applied some vacum and got it to move. hit the reset on the top and it went back up... . played with it a bit, it seems to work fine and resets everytime, which I thought it would.