Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

Just me, but I've never found any measurable horsepower increase when swapping the oil bath for a paper or K&N filter.

And if it's there, a ten horsepower increase on a 275 horsepower engine is 3.6% and that's within the run-to-run margin of error when using a Gtech measuring device.

jack vines

Not sure the lighter fluid dirty oil soup on the skin is any less of a health hazard. Then there is the issue of disposing of the fluid twice a year. Eliminating all unnecessary oil disposal is certainly the most responsible (smallest carbon footprint) way to go. For most, the efficiency of paper element is acceptable for round town driving. Are you sure a kn style is 10 HP on a Packard? At the track- air cleaners were removed for max power. I never saw anyone installing an oil bath- modern or vintage to add ten HP.

Not sure the lighter fluid dirty oil soup on the skin is any less of a health hazard

Latex gloves provides protection.

I manage to clean both oil bath pods on the Caribbean with about 1 quart of solvent which I dispose of with my waste oil. I spray and rinse rather than soak. I stick with the oil bath both for reasons of authenticity and because it's a better dirt trap with higher capacity than the paper elements.

EDIT: A short discussion on oil bath filters courtesy of Wikepedia:

An oil bath air cleaner consists of a sump containing a pool of oil, and an insert which is filled with fibre, mesh, foam, or another coarse filter media. When the cleaner is assembled, the media-containing body of the insert sits a short distance above the surface of the oil pool. The rim of the insert overlaps the rim of the sump. This arrangement forms a labyrinthine path through which the air must travel in a series of U-turns: up through the gap between the rims of the insert and the sump, down through the gap between the outer wall of the insert and the inner wall of the sump, and up through the filter media in the body of the insert. This U-turn takes the air at high velocity across the surface of the oil pool. Larger and heavier dust and dirt particles in the air cannot make the turn due to their inertia, so they fall into the oil and settle to the bottom of the base bowl. Lighter and smaller particles are trapped by the filtration media in the insert, which is wetted by oil droplets aspirated there into by normal airflow.

Oil bath air cleaners were very widely used in automotive and small engine applications until the widespread industry adoption of the paper filter in the early 1960s. Such cleaners are still used in off-road equipment where very high levels of dust are encountered, for oil bath air cleaners can sequester a great deal of dirt relative to their overall size without loss of filtration efficiency or airflow. However, the liquid oil makes cleaning and servicing such air cleaners messy and inconvenient, they must be relatively large to avoid excessive restriction at high airflow rates