Cold air intake/air filter

[xantiagreen]

This is the cars 2nd service and I was thinking of replacing the standard air filter with either a K&N panel filter or cold air intake kit cone filter again K&N.
Has anyone used any particular filter or setup that has shown good gains on mpg/acceleration. I'm after prolonging the life of the engine and my thinking is cleaner air and more of it will help the engine/turbo or am I being daft.

Cheers

[Northern_Mike]

This is the cars 2nd service and I was thinking of replacing the standard air filter with either a K&N panel filter or cold air intake kit cone filter again K&N.
Has anyone used any particular filter or setup that has shown good gains on mpg/acceleration. I'm after prolonging the life of the engine and my thinking is cleaner air and more of it will help the engine/turbo or am I being daft.

Cheers

If the rest of the engine and intake is standard, it won't make any difference at all.

[Old-Guy]

This being a turbo-diesel, the only air mass flow factor that you can easily affect is intercooler efficiency - i.e. how effective is the intercooler in reducing the temperature of the (compressed) air. With time and miles, the intercooler can get surprisingly bunged up with dead insects, leaves etc.

If you decide to try to pressure-wash the three 'radiators' (cooling system, a/c condenser, inter-cooler in that order from engine bay outwards), do not use any additive that is in the least caustic or the light-alloy components will rapidly corrode. Some radiators are thin light-alloy which can be destroyed amazingly quickly by commercial-type (caustic) Traffic Film Removers and the like.