Alright, you guys have me thinking - since I have a filter in one car and not the other, I could just walk out to the garage and do a side by side comparison. Assuming they are the same air output, I should be able to tell how much restriction the filter is. Maybe I'll rig up some way to measure the velocity.....the wife should be home soon - I'll give it a try.

 

I'm happy with my cabin air filter (also a Bosch). I noticed the NOISE level of the fan decrease after I installed the cabin air filter, but I don't notice any major difference in the amount of air pushed into the cabin. Like others, I only ever use 1 or 2 fan speed... usually 1 (my husband prefers 2). Sadly, service techs always always always put my vehicle in Max A/C, FULL speed fan anytime they get ahold of my vehicle. Dunno why... it's plenty cold at 1-2 and I still haven't figured out why they'd need cabin A/C when repairing a punctured tire and remounting it. But that's beside the point.

Love my cabin air filter. Certainly doesn't hurt... I too have less dust now. When I installed my cabin air filter, to my dismay I had several dead leaves in the cabin air filter cubby... so that alone is good to avoid (I'm highly allergic to grass/mold/tree pollens.)

 

Verrrry interesting. (BTW, some of my best friends are geeks.) Some have noticed a difference, and some have not. And, as far as I can tell, they are all labeled Bosch, though who knows who actually makes them. (Mine was labeled Bosch by the distributor, but the filter itself says MicronAir, which claims it makes most of the filters used in cars all over the world. They may be sold under lots of trade names.)

Anyway, MicronAir (on their web site) claims that they have very fine filters (surprise!), suggesting that they err on the side of flow restriction. In any case, there are standards for this sort of thing, so I have sent a message to their technical department, asking for the MERV rating for this filter. Let's not hold our collective breaths until they answer, but there is a quantitative answer to the question that is being asked, and one might as well try to find it out. (I would assume that Ford has a specification for the filter, but I shudder to think of the pain involved in trying to pry it out of them.)

Hal

P.S. My slab of spun filter material is working fine, but the pleated paper filters (like the MicronAir) are always much more efficient (read restrictive) than the spun filters.

 

Hmmmm.... don't look in the mirror

Its okay.... I'm one too... EE by trade.

 

My big dictionary says that a geek is a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, such as biting off the head of a live chicken. Have mercy, GeekGal.

I even have friends who are EEs; imagine that. I'm IEEE 08385197, but not an EE.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek

 

I would take the Wikipedia discussion more seriously were it not for the fact that the Wikipedia is written by, of, and for geeks. Anyway, I did cheat a bit, since even my big dictionary (the Random House) has a second definition that doesn't involve fowl decapitation.

But more on the cabin filter business. Home Depot does indeed label all their furnace filters with their MERV values, so I squandered $3.78 on a 10x30 MERV 8 filter, enough to make at least four cabin filters, cut one for my car, and installed it. Works perfectly, hardly any noticeable air restriction, and at least I know what I have.

And for the anti-geeks among us, the MERV rating is the relatively new industry standard rating system for filters (stands for minimum efficiency reporting value), runs (I think) from MERV 1 to MERV 16, and MERV 8 is considered a pretty good filter, not good enough for an operating room in a good hospital, or a clean room in a good laboratory, but certainly better than the filter that came with the car, which was none.

My FEH passes plenty of air with the MERV 8 filter, very little with the MicronAir filter that is labeled Bosch (whose MERV rating I've asked of MicronAir, with no realistic hope that they'll answer). End subject, as far as I am concerned.

Hal

 

Awww, does this mean we have to go back to talking about my scattering those silly little black caps all over the place?

Thanks for your experiments on the filters. For something crucial like the engine air or the big battery filter I'll stick with the Ford part but for something optional like the cabin air, I have bought my last $25 filter.....

 

Well, every now and then people perform better than expected, presumably to keep us cynics off balance. MicronAire respondedto my filter question (and gracefully at that), to wit:

***
Hello Mr. Lewis,

Thank you for the feedback. The micronAir filter media used for this application would be equivalent to about a MERV 12 residential filter. Based upon our benchmarking of our three major competitors, the micronAir filter not only had the best filtration efficiency (MERV), but also the lowest pressure loss. So, unfortunately, it may be difficult for you to locate a filter on the market that has a significantly lower pressure loss than the micronAir offering.

Just for your information, Ford acknowledged they had a low airflow issue with the Escape/Tribute and have made an improvement to the air inlet system for the 2007 model year.

***

Recall that my own first-purchased filter was also labeled Bosch, but it was made by MicronAire. Nowadays the name on the label has little to do with the actual provenance of a product.

I find the last sentence in the reply especially interesting, and depressing. Ford apparently acknowledged an air-flow problem within the industry, but diligently kept the information from their customers, while redesigning the system for the 2007 models. I guess that's the way the automobile industry works in this country.

Note also that the MERV rating of the 2006 filter is very high, presumably doing a bang-up job of taking impurities out of what little air gets through. One should feel free to do surgery in the back seat of an FEH, with the blower/filter turned on. Or deliver babies.

But there's a good side to all of this. We now all know what MERV means, so we are all informed consumers, the dream of a private-enterprise society.

Hal

 

That's how product development everywhere works these days.