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Air filtration for your engine took a huge step forward
when paper air filtering replaced running the air over a bed of oil. ALL
the air goes through the paper filter. ONLY the particles that happened to
be heavy enough to fall into the oil lake in the oil bath style filters got
caught. The higher the RPM, the less likely the dirt is to
fall.
When Carl Kiekhaefer was racing in the Carrera
Panamericana (Mexican Road Race) and then started NASCAR racing in 1955 with the
C300 Chryslers, he found that his race motors were being literally EATEN UP by
the amount of dirt that was NOT falling into the oil bath. He is credited
as being the first race team owner to send oil samples into a laboratory for
analysis to find out what the heck was going on that he was losing motors.
He worked with Purolator to bring the first paper filters into production that
were suitable for mass production for the US auto companies. There had
been after-market companies like Hellings that made competition air cleaners
with horse-hair type elements and even those were superior to the oil
baths.
We ALL have paper or cotton gauze types of elements for
air filtration today in part because Kiekhaefer set the whole industry down that
path.
I own a '53 Chrysler Pan Am race car. It happens to
be the first car ever assembled by Chrysler with dual quad carburetors on a
prototype manifold using two of the first available '54 New Yorker 4-barrel
carbs. Likely because of Kiekhaefer's input, the factory put Hellings air
cleaners on that car for the sandy desert roads. Yes, the C300s and 300Bs
still had old-fashioned oil baths because they had been the industry standard
all those years. But starting early in the '55 race year the Kiekhaefer
NASCAR '55 and then the '56 300s all had paper air cleaners.
There is no problem getting adequate amounts of air
through paper. You enlarge the amount of paper surface to match the
potential air intake of the engine. That is what the pleating is
for. Take a look at any high performance car at your next local cruise
night. They might have an oiled cotton K&N but predominantly you will
see large and very large paper filters, sometimes just to impress you with the
idea they really NEED that much air.
I would no sooner run an oil bath air cleaner on any of my
cars, no matter how authentic and year correct, than I would run any motor
without oil in the crankcase.
Wayne
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