Originally Posted By: rooflessVW
My reservation with this thread is that I have seen oiled cotton gauze filters in front of turbine engines - IN THE DESERT - with perfectly clean intakes, compressors, and turbines. On the Rolls-Royce M250-C30 the filters eliminated our need for regular turbine washes - indeed we didn't perform one in the 18 months I was there. Another added benefit was more available power over a traditional particle separator.
I have also used K&N in my younger days, and have never personally seen a wet or dirty intake tract.
I believe that if this filter was installed competently, there would be no thread.
My opinion, of course, and I meant no disrespect.
I used K&N's when I was younger as well, but they were on N/A gas apps, so air ingestion wasn't anywhere close to approaching what's going on with an ISX.
Curious about the RR's, were those K&N filters comparable to what we are seeing here or something from another manufacturer that might be of better quality and finer filtration?
I have no reason to assume the filter was improperly installed in the housing (despite Silk's reservations) and indeed the limited view of the sealing ends seems to support that: there is no real dust on the end we can see. Perhaps the oiling of the filter that shouldn't be oiled created some issue we haven't accounted for, but it did end up costing the bloke who owned it a rebuild. Expensive lesson.