Is Engine filter replacement necessary even when it looks good?

Might as well. 20 bucks every 30k is not that bad.

 

I have had my Toyota dealer tell me that my air cleaner is scheduled for 30,000 miles but they thought it was good for another 10,000. (Your dealer may not be as customer centered)

 

Hold it up to the Sun or a light and check it, especially in the bottom of the creases. If you can see light just fine, stick it back in.

 

+1

It traps big crap you can see and little stuff you cannot as easily see.

Generally I just bang it against the side of my house a few times and pop it back in. You can get a K&N filter that you just run under the tap and re-oil when you change it. Less waste if you are concerned about that.

 

Amazingly, Prius has the cleanest air filter from all the cars I have owned. 30,000 miles is a carry-over from regular cars that gulp 2-3 x more gas (and air).

I will replace at 30,000 to keep warranty intact, but probably less after that.

Now, one should inspect if often. I did have a fair share of ail filters with deteriorated gaskets that let dirt in.

 

Mine looks very clean after 26,000 miles. At this rate, it could easily last for 60,000 miles.

If the filter looks relatively clean and the gasket is in good shape, I see no reason to replace it unless you are under warranty.

 

With the engine filter I'd be inclined to change it on schedule. citing 21Ktoaster's mention of
"little stuff you cannot as easily see".

 

If the restriction is not excessive, then there is no reason to change it. Visual condition can be misleading.


iPhone ?

 

mime looked terrible @ 30k.

 

K&N here also, a little soap a little water a little air dry a little oil and it's like new

 

^ Air borne salt and grit from Alaskan winter roads? I guess any time you're needing to use windshield washer fluid a lot, some of the same crud is getting pulled into the air intake. If yours was looking terrible at 30K miles, maybe you should cut that interval in half, sort of "extreme service". Just looking at my Canadian Schedule, and I'm paraphrasing a little:

Just a general rebuttal to the interval stretchers: First off, if Toyota says change it, I'm going to change it. And save the dated receipt for the filter. The minor $'s involved, the lengthy interval, it's just not worth second guessing.

 

I don't know what the deal is but all my vehicles exhibit the same issue to one degree or another. Some have dark, water like stains on them. Plus in the Anchorage area, we have volcanic ash problems as well. Even though we haven't had an eruption lately, the ash tends to hang around for a while, very nasty stuff.

 

I paid ~$25 for my replacement engine air filter & cabin air filter combined (including shipping) from rockauto.com. At that price, why take a risk (with engine issues, and potential warranty issues)?

 

I wonder why?

 

It's too bad car manufacturers don't include filter restriction indicators in cars. They would easily pay for their selves after avoiding a couple of unnecessary filter changes.

 

See post #13 if you haven't... It certainly is a good question. The inside of the box (incoming side) is usually down right filthy.

[edit] lol, I see. yeah, I sucked up a mime in my filter. ha.

 

I changed mine out at 30k just to satisfy warranty. It was not that dirty where I could not have blown it out with air from the opposite side.

At 55K I checked it again and had just a few pieces of trash that you could see. I blew it out with air and then viewing in sunlight could see the sunlight through all of the ridges. So I chose to replace it and I will check again after about 10k miles.

When it comes to car maintenance I am one that will typically err on the conservative side, especially for a $20 filter, but I saw no reason why not to reuse the engine filter this time.

 

30,000 miles is a fairly universally OEM recommended interval for replacing engine air filters. Both my 4.6L V8 LTC and the Prius call for changing the air filter at 30,000 miles, but the 4.6 V8 passes probably four to five times as much air through the filter in 30,000 miles than does the Prius. It is not surprising that at 30,000 miles the Prius filter is relatively clean. I changed my Prius engine air filter at 30,000 miles, but it really didn't need changing. It wasn't dirty or deteriorated in any way.

Even a moderately dirty air filter is not critical to fuel consumption or power on modern computer controlled, fuel injected, air metered cars like it was on the old carburated cars without computer controls. When the air filter gets dirty on the Prius, the computer controls adjust the amount of fuel to maintain the correct air to fuel ratio. With a dirty Prius air filter you will just have to press the accelerator a little farther to get the car to go than with a clean filter, but fuel efficiency and power are not affected. That being said, it is still a good idea to check the filter and replace it before it becomes too restrictive or the gaskets fail, but who knows how long that would be in terms of miles? In normal operation, except for dusty or other special operating conditions, a Prius engine air filter could be good for 100,000+ miles, if inspected and cleaned regularly.

 

Blowing it out with high pressure air can disturb the media to the point that it ends up with larger passages through the media(1). You would be better off just tapping it on something to knock the big crud off then vacuuming the dirty side.


(1) My source for that was a Donaldson air filter engineer that was doing some work for my previous employer. Have also seen the warning in some maintenance manuals.