Cleaning the Dirty Mopar Air Filter - 2007 Dodge Charger SRT8 Long-Term Road Test

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Cleaning the Dirty Mopar Air Filter - 2007 Dodge Charger SRT8 Long-Term Road Test

The air filter in our 2007 Dodge Charger SRT8 looked dirty and it was time to clean it. But how?

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s197gt

i have a filter that must be oiled. i use the k&n filter spray cleaning stuff then wash it off with the garden hose. let it dry and re-oil.

some people less frugal then i buy an extra filter so that their car isn't out of service for a day while the filter is drying.

kirkhilles1

My opinion is to typically avoid these type of re-useable/washable filters. The real world HP gains are almost nil, it's more of a louder intake sound that you get. My understanding is that people often put too much oil on and such and I just don't find it worth it typically. Get a high quality filter and change it every 30k. No big deal.

longtimelurker

To get that filter clean, you should initially blow it out in reverse direction to the airflow. You have a compressor - ?

You might also get the right kind of spray cleaner for the MAF sensor wire and clean that - it might have some oil on it.

daryleason

Here's my question...while it CAN be washed...is it really worth it? I mean, when you consider the time-value of money, how long did you spend cleaning this thing? Is the value of your time less than the cost of just buying another one? And after you cleaned it, will it perform as well as a new one would? So there's also the law of diminishing returns as well. I'm not saying we shouldn't reuse, maintain, or re-purpose something, I'm just genuinely curious if it's worth it for an air filter. What are they, about $40 new, right? If it would have taken me more than a half hour of labor to do it, I don't think I'd have done it. I'd have just popped a new one in.

stever

Especially one that wasn't properly cleaned in the first place.

hoseclamp

you might want to spray off the MAF sensor wires with some appropriate cleaner, in case the elements have a layer of oil on them. could help your gas mileage too.

goaterguy

That looks like engine oil that is coming out of the intake manifold due to PCV blowby. It is rare that only the bottom of the filter was soaked.

thecardoc3

"I don't have any measurable way of knowing if my cleaning boosted our Charger's horsepower, but I'd like to think it's running a bit stronger now."

You don't have a scan tool that can display the engine load data pid? The engine load data pid is calculated from engine rpm and the MAF or MAP input. By monitoring that data pid and the RPM under a hard acceleration you can see how much air the engine is pumping against what the engineers predicted that the engine should be able to pump. There is a second way for MAF sensor systems and that is by using a VE calculator. This takes the engine rpm, MAF reported airflow in grams per second, ambient temperature, and the engine displacement and compares the MAF reading to the theoretical efficiency of the engine.

Here is one example. https://www.otctools.com/ve

Here is another. http://www.lindertech.com/downloads.htm

dgcamero

thecardoc3 said:

"I don't have any measurable way of knowing if my cleaning boosted our Charger's horsepower, but I'd like to think it's running a bit stronger now."

You don't have a scan tool that can display the engine load data pid? The engine load data pid is calculated from engine rpm and the MAF or MAP input. By monitoring that data pid and the RPM under a hard acceleration you can see how much air the engine is pumping against what the engineers predicted that the engine should be able to pump. There is a second way for MAF sensor systems and that is by using a VE calculator. This takes the engine rpm, MAF reported airflow in grams per second, ambient temperature, and the engine displacement and compares the MAF reading to the theoretical efficiency of the engine.

Here is one example. https://www.otctools.com/ve

Here is another. http://www.lindertech.com/downloads.htm

A cheap OBD2 reader and the Torque app in the Google play store ftw!

thecardoc3

ftw? http://www.acronymfinder.com/FTW.html

roadburner

The amount of hp a cold air intake might add depends almost entirely on the platform. Some cars show little to no gain while others-like my Mazdaspeed 3-can pick up over 20 hp. My MS3 uses a dry filter so I simply bought an extra filter element so I can quickly fit a clean filter and clean the other filter at my leisure- in any case cleaning takes all of about ten minutes at most.