3 year old Mercury Mariner cabin filter

[crainholio]

This '05 Mercury Mariner (Ford Escape) had no cabin air filter from the factory which is SOP according to my research. This became an issue in Spring 2016 when the AC smelled like rotten fish. I flushed out the AC tract with cleaner foam followed by mold-inhibiting spray, and installed a Purolator filter in the vacant slot in the cowling.

Three years later I'm noticing reduced airflow from the vents, so I removed the cowling cover and found the filter in fairly disgusting shape as shown. We have huge oak trees and it's parked outside. New Purolator filter went in and all is well.

 

[joekingcorvette]

Not good. Might want to check it every year.

 

[gathermewool]

Originally Posted by joekingcorvette
Not good. Might want to vacuum it every year.


Fixed it for you!

 

[Dave9]

Or just clean the leaves out of the hood/cowl area more often, particularly in fall. The blower can't suck in, what isn't there.

 

[JustinH]

for what these filters cost, I have been replacing at six month intervals, or at least one year.

Here in south texas the AC runs non stop so they get dirty quickly.

I had a company car escape, they do not come with factory cabin filters, but my fleet services guy put one in. They are in a nonsense location under the cowl I watched him put it in.

 

[crainholio]

Thanks guys, but it's at 197K miles and we'll be trading it in Fall 2020. This was likely the last cabin air filter service for it. It runs like the day we bought it new in 2005, but NJ road salt is taking a toll and I'm fighting a losing battle.

POR15, Fluid Film, and Corrosion-X over the years have slowed the rust but there are sheetmetal seams where these vehicles rust from the inside out in high salt conditions. Driver's rear quarter panel near the back door and the floorpan-to-body seams are slowly rusting away despite my best efforts.

I can't complain too much, it always got us home and handled snow with no problem. Nice job by Ford aside from the sheetmetal interior coating.

 

[kkreit01]

I had an 07 & 08 Mariner. You can run without the filter. As mentioned, they did not come with one from the factory. Many did however, add one after the fact. The forums used to be very active and quite informative. I'm sure they've died down by now. (for the 1st generation of Escape/Mariner).

 

[rrounds]

On our '06 S2000 the top is down 99% of the time(have put over 150k miles on it) we still have the org, cabin filter. I just bought a Wix filter back in '06 and swap them out, take the dirty one and wash it out and let it dry. Every 6 months I do this so the air going into the heating/air conditioning system is cleaner than not having any filter. When the top has to go up like when we get caught in the rain we get no funny smells out of the heat/ac sys.

Rod
Yes, I know I'm a cheapskate sometimes.

 

[purelux]

For the minor cost of a filter if it came with one or is designed for one to drop in why not. I've had cigarette butts and carpenter bees in cars i've changed, even with a screen it'll help more crap from getting to the blower. Quite often you can just as mentioned blow it out and keep using it without much flow restriction. I should have gotten a picture but i changed my brothers air and cabin filters which i checked by chance detailing his escape. Even with the air intake on the front of the car while dirty the cabin filter was deep enough in dirt debris you could have measured the depth. That's besides the dirt that actually went into the filter. It was about 2 years since both were done.