Engine/Transmission (1998.5 - 2002) Air Filter Options for REALLY Dirty Environments

[Midnite]

Those of you who use trucks in really dirty, dusty environments--what do you do, or what have you seen on the trucks to deal with air filtration?



Back when I was just out of high school I worked for a roofing company doing demolition on a lot of flat asphalt roofs. One of my jobs was maintaining the small engines on the demo gear, and I remember that the air filters had small foam "socks" that slipped over the cylindrical paper elements (like a very scaled down version of the BHAF). The paper elements were always pristine since the foam sock caught everything. I would rinse the foam sock in gas to clean it, then wring it out, soak it in 30 wt. oil and then wring out the excess oil, and it was good to go again.



Since putting a BHAF on my truck quite awhile ago I've always wanted to find some kind of version of the little foam socks I used on those small engines years ago. Imagine a 1 to 2" thick foam version of the Outerwears slip-on pre-filter. Lately I've decided to actually put some effort into finding something like that because we have a volcano relatively close that appears to be getting ready to blow and send some volcanic ash our way. That stuff is super fine and extremely abrasive, and I don't want any of it getting into my engine.



I'm hoping that something like that is already used on the air filters of excavation equipment, or dump trucks, and that I can find one ready-made for my BHAF. Anyone seen anything like this?



Thanks,

Mike

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

This thread will at least partly cover your topic, displaying a "poor man's" interfilter to catch at least some of the crud that still passes thru an Outerwears.



BHAF service - and a heads up... - TDR Roundtable



My area probably doesn't have near the contamination yours does, but the pics do show how dirty the outer cover was - and the inner - and what the filter element itself looked like.



I've since switched to a Donaldson/Amsoil Nanofibre element, and used the same setup:



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I had my wife sew up the intermediate cover from an old piece of cotton T-shirt material - coarse enough to flow plenty of air, but fine enough to add considerable added protection to the filter media itself - my filter minder has never budged off the bottom, and the single cleaning I've done so far was identical to that of the previous BHAF.



.

 

[Jefff929]

Gary,



that looks pretty good... T-shirt good idea!

 

[jeepit]

Gary, How do you keep that engine compartment so clean??

 

[amsoilman]

The Amsoil Nano-fiber filter elements are 99. 5 % efficient at captureing 2 Micron material, and they have varying sizes that may fit your application. Here ia a link that may help you.



AMSOIL Ea Air Induction Filters (EaAU)

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

Gary, How do you keep that engine compartment so clean??

Lots of elbow grease?



NAHhhhh - I constantly make so many mods around the engine bay, it doesn't have a chance to get dirty! :-laf



Actually, the above pics are already old - here's a more recent one:



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[Midnite]

Thought I'd post a quick follow-up. I ended up taking an old t-shirt, soaked it in oil, wrung it out as best I could, then wrapped it around my BHAF, and bungeed it in place. It actually fits very well with 100% coverage over the BHAF. We ended up getting a little less than 1/8th of an inch of ash getting dumped on us, but it'll migrate into the shoulders and gutters on the roads and still get kicked up by passing vehicles, so I'm probably going to leave this on for at least the next month, maybe two depending on how our snow thaws out, and whether we get much rain soon, etc. The city should have street sweepers out in a few weeks too, so that'll help.

There were two unanticipated side effects to the oiled t-shirt:

1. It's very restrictive to airflow. The truck doesn't smoke on low to medium throttle, but it's really easy to make it smoke now when I get into it, especially on higher levels on the comp. Naturally as you might expect, boost is slightly down and EGT is slightly up. No biggie--I'm not towing anything this time of year.

2. It really masks turbo and exhaust brake noise. I was very surprised how much it muffled the exhaust brake in particular.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I was really hoping to find some kind of foam sock at an industrial supplier for something like $3 - 5, but this'll do what I need it to do.

Mike

 

[ThrottleJockey]

Sigh... ... Gary and his old T-shirts.



Dude, if your wife finds out she's gonna be mad.

 

[blacksheepdiesel]

The sock on my AFE stage 2 filters so good it keeps the filter clean appearing. Driving 10k to 12k miles per month I drive I have to clean the sock with Simple Green once a month.

Godspeed,
Trent

 

[6naline01]

air filter with icebox

I need to know the air filter# that come's with Icebox. I know it is an Amsoil nanofiber but not the number. For some reason I can not get into Icebox Mnuf. website and I have mis-filed the information I had. Thank's for the help

Mike