Get to know the air filter in your car
The air filter is used to prevent the dirt entering the engine. It separates the abrasive particles entering the combustion system.
A blocked air filter can lower your car’s fuel efficiency. Regular driving on dirt also can cause quick clogging in your air filters. Regular cleaning of your air filters in vehicles can improve your car performance.
Where located
- Usually the air filter is located above the engine.
- In older car models with carburetors the air filter was located under a huge, round cover made of plastic or metal.
- In newer cars with fuel-injectors, the air filters are square or rectangular housing found slightly off center between the front grill and the engine.
Symptoms of failure of air filter
- Black smoke exiting from exhaust
- One of the common symptom of clogging of air filter is black smoke coming out from the exhaust pipe.
- With lean oxygen, the mixture will be too rich.
- Therefore, more fuel will be used during combustion process leading to black smoke like residue being sent out from the exhaust.
- Engine back firing
- If you hear a sound of an explosion coming from the exhaust pipe, this is caused by the rich fuel mixture and some amount of unused fuel leaving from the engine into exhaust pipe and then the fuel ignite due to the heat.
- We can even see a flame at the end of the exhaust pipe. This is also symptom of air filter is in bad condition and needs to be replaced.
- Low performance of engine
- With lean oxygen in the air-fuel mixture, the engine will use more fuel than needed to run the engine.
- This will cause the performance of the engine to decrease extremely.
Smell of fuel in the exhaust
- When you are trying to start the engine, if there is a smell of petrol/diesel, it because of lack of air getting into the carburetor or fuel injection system.
- With reduced quantity of oxygen in air, the fuel mixture there will be fuel unused for the combustion and it will go out via the exhaust pipe.
How to replace an air filter
- Before replacing from the air filter park the car and apply parking brakes shift into first gear.
- Then open the hood and locate the air filter.
- Remove the air filter by Loosen the clamp that seals the air pipe cable.
- Remove all the all the screws holding air filter.
- Keep all the screws and other parts together and in a safe location so that you can find them later. You can see a round or rectangular filter made of cotton and paper.
- Connect the air hose to the compressor and use the compressed air to blow out the dust, or use a vacuum cleaner to suck out any dirt.
- Seal the air pipe cable with removable adhesive tape.
- Now take the new air filter and connect to air filter hub.
- Tighten all the screw and bolts that are removed previously.
- Start the engine in make sure that air filter is working properly.