Oil filters are imperative for your car to run like a clean, mean driving machine. The intricate mechanics of your vehicle rely on filters to help prevent contamination and impact performance. Oil filters, air filters, or other filters are a must if you want your beloved car to run smoothly. When one of your filters gets clogged, it causes problems and affects performance. You may notice a loss of power, oil light, dirty smoke, or perhaps engine failure.
Each filter, oil, fuel, air, and transmission have a different role but contribute to the same goal to keep you and your car driving smoothly. In this blog, we’ll look at the various filters in your vehicle, learn what each type of vehicle filter does and tell when one of them isn’t working, and why you regularly need to consider car filter replacement.
Know all about the filters in your car
Every car has 4 main filters – oil filter, air filter, fuel filter, and cabin filter. All these filters function to enable the flow and catch impurities like the pollutants in the fuel, the dust and contaminants in the air, and the dirt in the motor oil.
Keep in mind that your car filters won’t work properly if not replaced in time, and in the end, it could cause an impact on the mechanics. If you replace your filters, your car will be more efficient; let’s take a closer look at a couple of them:
Get to Know about Your Vehicle’s Oil Filter
What is an oil filter?
The most important task of an oil filter is to maintain continuous oil flow and remove particles (dirt, metallic particles, and oxidized oil) that might appear in the motor oil due to engine wear. The filter purifies the motor oil so that it does its job efficiently.
Engine oil lubricates the moving components inside the engine and helps regulate engine operating temperatures. However, with age, stuff like dust, moisture, metal particles, and corrosion causes the engine oil to become dirty!
Oil filters also help in trapping contaminants as they cycle through the engine. Oil filters have enough contaminant holding capacity to remain fully functional until oil change is due.
Like most of the other components in your car, this filter is subject to regular maintenance, which is why we suggest changing it at specific intervals. Some symptoms of a failing oil filter include an engine oil dash light (or illuminated check engine light), decreased engine oil pressure, or knocking sounds from the engine due to the lack of oil pressure.
It’s always best to get timely filter replacements, preferably using your manufacturer-recommended maintenance schedule. However, if you notice you are due for an oil change, bring your car to Diesel Components Inc. now.
Reasons to change your oil filter:
- To avoid soiling your new oil: You should generally change the oil filter at each oil change (every 10,000 km for petrol cars and every 15,000 km for diesel cars) to avoid soiling your new oil.
- To reduce engine wear: A failing oil filter allows impurities to pass through and slow down the arrival of oil, leading to poor performance, early engine wear, or even engine failure.
Get to Know about your Car’s Air Filters
What is an air filter?
Just as we need oxygen to breathe, a car needs oxygen for the combustion process. The air filter prevents dust, insects, debris, and other particles from reaching the engine while ensuring a good mixture of fuel & air to support performance. Air filters come in different shapes – Circular, Panels, or cylindrical, and made of a pleated material that filters the air.
Engine Air Filter
Almost all the modern cars out there have two air filters — the engine air filter and the cabin air filter, which filter the air coming into your vehicle’s engine, and cabin, respectively. Engine air filters help keep dust, dirt, and other pollutants out of the engine and prevent them from entering the passenger compartment. The internal combustion engines require air to function, and that’s why a clean engine air filter is detrimental to your car’s performance & efficiency. You should get your engine air filter checked and replaced as per your manufacturer’s recommendation, or possibly sooner.
The signs of a “bad” or dirty engine air filter include engine misfires and decreased fuel economy. Along with that, a clogged or dirty air filter can potentially damage other parts of your engine like the spark plugs. If these signs of a bad air filter aren’t enough to convince you to replace yours, consider this, a study published by the U.S. Department of Energy suggests that vehicles running on clean engine air filters tend to experience about 6 to 11% improvement while accelerating.
Cabin Air Filter
The cabin air filter helps in maintaining the air quality inside your car by capturing pollutants like allergens and dust before they reach your nostrils! Apart from possibly making your allergies worse, a dirty or perhaps clogged cabin air filter can lead to a host of car A/C problems, such as foul, musty odors coming from your car’s vents or reduced airflow.
Moreover, if you’re driving in the winter, a clogged air filter can make it harder to de-fog your windows. If you start noticing any of these issues or are due for a cabin air filter replacement, visit Diesel Components, Inc. for help freshening up your cabin filter!
Reasons to change your air filter:
- Save on fuel: It decreases fuel consumption by ensuring good combustion.
- Improve your car’s performance: When there’s clean air flowing into the engine, the mixture of fuel and air supports maximum power.
- Avoid black smoke: If the air filter gets clogged, the fuel combustion is not completed, which leads to dirty exhaust smoke, which again is a bad sign.
Experience Expert Maintenance and Repairs at Diesel Components, Inc.
Do you need to change your vehicle filters? Head to Diesel Components, Inc. to have our expert technicians take a thorough look at your vehicle filters and replace any as necessary. Diesel Components, Inc. provides only recognized brand name products, so you’re assured of a long-haul, top-quality performance and a perfect fit for all of your filter products.
With Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) designed air filters from Donaldson, you have a perfect match for the cleanest air possible for your engine. Donaldson Filters are used by various industrial sectors, including chemical, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and alternative energy. Donaldson Filters are distributed worldwide by OEMs and independent warehouse distributors like Diesel Components, Inc.
Donaldson Filters deliver superior and heavy-duty performance and provide customers with solutions that improve peoples’ lives, enhance equipment performance, and protect our environment. Donaldson Filter’s products or Donaldson air intake filters are found in a wide variety of industries, including agriculture, on- and off-road equipment, power generation, pharmaceuticals, aerospace and defense, food & beverage, oil and gas, transportation, and more.
