Hey Guys! I recently just got rid of my 2015 wrx. The only thing I did to that car was put in a KN air filter in it. It obviously didn't add any HP and I could careless about gas mileage, but what I did love was the fact that the Turbo spool was a lot louder. Has anyone put one of these in a 3.5 ecoboost exploer? Does it sound better? are you happy with it?
New here but not new to Explorers. We are on our second 5th Gen. Our first was a 2014 that we put nearly 180K on before it wasn't worth repairing anymore. We currently have a 2018 Platinum with a tad over 120K miles on it. While we're not necessarily hard on cars we do put a ton of miles them every year traveling between businesses around the country. Started poking around here and decided to give my experience with the whole aftermarket filter thing. With the number of miles we put on each year it's cost effective to buy the K&N. For the current car we have two of them and just swap it out every 30K miles or so and clean the old one when time permits. Keep in mind that the truck is 100% stock other than Power stop Brakes and the filter.
The questions always comes up.
- Is it faster, does it make more power? More power, Maybe a couple but not enough to notice so NO it's not faster.
- Is it louder? Yes. but not enough to notice if you are driving down an open road. If you are in a tunnel or parking garage you can hear the turbos spool and it is louder.
- Is the gas mileage better. We'll that depends on you. If you drive it harder wanting to hear the noise then the mileage drops. Out on the highway, I'm averaging right at 21.8 mpg at 80ish mph with the cruise on. Don't know how that compares to others but we track our mileage and fill ups for business expense purposes, so I have the data.
The other question that people ask is, aren't you concerned that it will hurt the motor because more dirt gets in?? Quick answer is, No i'm not. The rest of the car will fall apart around the motor before you see any negative effects from any change in filtration.
Now I don't have any scientific data to support this, but I can share my experiences. The 2014 Explorer was NA and we ran full synthetic oil in it after the first oil change. Due to mileage and the fact that the car lived on the highway we changed the oil every 10K miles and cleaned the filter every 30K or so. When we finally sold the car at 180K miles the engine had no internal issues that would be related to filtration. By that point most of the accessories on the motor had failed, the suspension had been almost entirly replaced, steering replaced, transmission replaced, bearings, axles etc. and lets not talk about the electrical issues but nothing internal on the engine so I don't feel the filter had any detrimental effect on the engine.
Fast forward to the 2018. With the turbos I'm a bit more cautious with the oil changes and typically do them between 5K-6K miles. For us that comes out to an oil change about every 6 weeks or so. The K&N filter get swapped out for a clean one around 30K or so. To date I’ve not had any internal engine related issues. Everything around it is failing but the motor internally is strong.
While we love the comfort and performance of the 2018 it is unfortunate that we are seeing the same issues we had with the 2014. Most alarmingly is the transmission and suspension issues. The transmission failed at right at the one year mark at 60K miles and is beginning to show the same signs again. Looking to keep this one to the end of the year or around 150K as we're thinking of moving up the 2021 but i'm not putting another transmission in it.