Does someone have a bandage?
(Cotton gauze filter discussion)

During the course of our product development, we did a lot investigation on the low restriction products currently available to the auto enthusiast. Cotton gauze dominates this market and while all gauzes start out as the same white color, they then get tinted with various hues of oil.

There are red, blue and some green ones. We even saw one that was kind of orange (red gone wrong, maybe). One thing they have in common, regardless of their color, is they are all made from a material that was never intended to be used for filtration.

We were mildly amused by the descriptions some of these suppliers used to describe and justify the use of something other than a purpose built material for filters. Some counted the number of layers they used. Others described the gradient density of their layers, but the most telling was the one who proudly proclaimed their use of “medical grade gauze.” We still haven’t figured out what that has to do with protecting your engine, but it might come in handy if you’re injured while on the road.

What’s wrong with cotton gauze and what can do a better job?
The answer to that depends on what you expect your air filter to do. Being the old-fashioned type, we expect an air filter to protect our engine from airborne particulate and that means getting the highest possible filtration efficiency. If you can accomplish that at a restriction level equivalent to the gauze products, most people would agree they’d rather have higher effciency than lower.