how often should you change an engine air filter?

most manufacturers say every 20,000 to 30,000 kilometres, or annually, whichever comes first.

that assumes ordinary driving. if you spend time on gravel roads, which plenty of people around Elgin County do, or work on farm or construction sites, halve it. a filter is judged by what is in it, not by the kilometres on it.

what a blocked one actually costs you

the old advice was that a dirty air filter costs fuel economy. on a modern fuel-injected engine that is largely untrue, because the computer measures the air and adjusts to it.

what it costs you instead is power, because the engine cannot draw what it wants, and eventually it costs you parts, because a filter blocked far enough lets the engine pull harder at the filter's seal edges and past a media that is saturated.

do not judge it by looking at the outside

the face gets dirty long before the filter is finished. hold it up to a light and look through it. if you can see light through the pleats it is doing its job.

do not blow it out with an airline. compressed air from the wrong side drives dirt through the media and puts holes in it, and a holed filter is worse than a dirty one because it lets grit straight into the engine.

the one that matters more than people think

on a turbocharged engine, anything that gets past the filter goes through the turbo's compressor wheel first, spinning at very high speed. grit does real damage there.

if your vehicle has a turbo, this is not a filter to stretch.

what we do

we show you the old one. that sounds small, but "your air filter is dirty" is one of the classic upsells, and the answer to that is holding it up to the light in front of you rather than asking you to take our word.