What do you drive that your filters are that expensive? My wife has an olds intrigue (sp) and I thought that a $12 car filter was expensive. My motorcycle filter is $22 new, and has 12,000 miles and still looking new. I guess these are still very afordable IMO. But I only drive about 15,000 miles year on my truck and 6-8,000 on the bike. If you drive 100,000 miles/year I guess it could play into the scheme of things.

I thought the sound of the K&N was cool too, but I guess I got over that, like I did when I was a kid and turned the air filter cover upside down on my 63 Impala [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

Ninja 6R, Vulcan 800A, Corvette, Arctic Cat 400, VW Jetta, Mini van (no filter) and a Suburban. All the K & N filters cost up to 4 X the price of a stock replacement filter. $18 for a new stock filter versus $ 60 for a K&N( example). I put many miles a year between my wife and I on all but the corvette.

 

This link was for the Duramax diesel engine filter, but I think you will see for yourself, K&N's flow more air, but also pass more dirt than paper. Filter test

 

Boy, 1tonchev, I managed to read through most of that test. The graphs say it all. And after plowing through all the 'data' from this very sophisticated test, I think this "cut and paste" section pretty much says it all:

"In the chart above it’s important to note the different test durations for each filter. The AC Delco filter test ran for 60 minutes before exceeding the restriction limit while the AMSOIL and K&N tests each ran for 20 and 24 minutes respectively before reaching max restriction. In 60 minutes the AC Filter accumulated 574gms of dirt and passed only 0.4gms. After only 24 minutes the K&N had accumulated 221gms of dirt but passed 7.0gms. Compared to the AC, the K&N “plugged up” nearly 3 times faster, passed 18 times more dirt and captured 37% less dirt. See the data tables for a complete summary of these comparisons."

Now, I'm no engineer, and not a mechanic. Not an expert on anything. But, it makes logical sense to me that any filter that lets more air through has to be doing it by being less 'restrictive'. And air filters are built to restrict the flow of dust and dirt as the air passes through.

The link is to a testing of several auto air filters, not ATV filters, but I'm sure the results would be the same. And they were not picking on K&N. Nine filters were tested and K&N was just one of them. All were well known filters that we see every day in parts stores and magazines.

I'm impressed with the information, and I will keep doing what I've been doing. Using stock air filters. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-shocked.gif[/img]