Hi, I am your air filter. Please be nice to me.

Let me introduce myself. I am the air filter on your power equipment. You know, that little thing on your trimmer that you never pay any attention to. Don't lie to me, I know you haven't even looked at me all season. I don't like it. I am also that thing on your mower engine that the service shop wanted to replace but you yelled at them, telling them I don't need to be replaced. I don't appreciate your attitude toward me. Like it or not, I am very important. I will try to explain to you why I believe I have one of the hardest jobs of any part on your equipment. Matter of fact, I think I work harder than you do! For example, look at the following figures (these figures are approximate, according to my calculations): If I am installed on a 27.2 cubic centimeter (cc) Stihl FS 55, that is operating at max permissible RPMs, I need to clean about 4,440 GALLONS of air per hour, which is about 1.25 gallons PER SECOND!! That is a 55 gallon drum of air in less than every 45 seconds! If I am installed on a typical 18-HP Briggs and Stratton Vanguard engine, in the 350000 model series, and the engine is being operated at max permissible RPMs, I will need to clean just over 9 gallons per second. That is over 32,524 gallons per hour!! That adds up to over 591 of the 55 gallon drums full of air in an hour. For every 6.6 revolutions of the engine, I clean about one gallon of air. For comparison purposes, the tanker trailer in the attached photo holds only 9,400 gallons. I would have to clean that entire tanker trailer full of air in just over 17 minutes. I get tired just thinking about that! My goal here is to make you folks more aware of the job I do for you and your equipment. Don't take me for granted. Keep me clean, and I will help your engine last a lot longer. Tell me what your thoughts are about this. How many of you realized the importance of your air filter? If you want to know how much air your engine uses in a given time period, post the displacement of your engine (in CC, cubic inch, or even liter) and I will figure it up for you. It is insane how much air your engine uses. Heck, if you have a Chevy truck with a 350 engine, and it runs at 2500 RPMs, your engine will use about 113,635 gallons in an hour.

[swstout]

Lawn care business tips

With your permission, I would like to add this to my blog1 Steve

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[MountainViewGreenskeeper]

lol i could only imagine what my 488 8.0L v10 breaths then. Glad I switched to the K&N Cold Air FIPKit then.

Also for those that want to squeeze alittle more fuel mileage and power out your truck google gadgetman groove. Works best with older vehicles(less computers) and is reversable. Just figured I would through it out there for the penny pinchers out there since we was talkn about air filters and their job.

Originally Posted by MountainViewGreenskeeper

lol i could only imagine what my 488 8.0L v10 breaths then. Glad I switched to the K&N Cold Air FIPKit then.

Also for those that want to squeeze alittle more fuel mileage and power out your truck google gadgetman groove. Works best with older vehicles(less computers) and is reversable. Just figured I would through it out there for the penny pinchers out there since we was talkn about air filters and their job.

352 gallons per second....

Steve, I will try to send you a message or email.

[Steve]

I was just working on an older motorcycle and found a mouse had made a nice nest inside the air cleaner by chewing the filter into little shreds.

[majoe7]

Thanks Eli for the post. This is Awesome. I do weekly, monthly and 100 hour maintenance to all of my equipment but I am a little laxed when it comes to my trimmer and edger. How often do you remove the cover to the air filter and look at it? I don’t do this often because I mentally think that I’m not putting many minutes or hours on them. Wrong. I do change them out twice a year but I will be more apt to do it more often.

Today I went and bought some new plugs, air filters and gas filters to change tomorrow and I plan on rebuilding the carbs also. Once again, great post and thanks.

John

[SuperiorPower]

Just bringing it back to the top since mowing season is almost here and this will be an issue for you guys soon.

Good luck guys

[wandfsmall]

since when did you ever see anyone service a 2cycle I have them out 10 years without ever replacing the air filter, they come in and the filter is falling apart and I always get the question as to what caused the equipment to fail.