Has anyone got any experience with using a K&N panel filter in the new fabia?

I was contemplating it as a change to my stock filter on my 1.4tdi, for a few of reasons really.

1, maybe increasing power?

2, increasing mpg?

3, reducing waste going to landfill

4, the cost of replacing it for another stock one when it goes for service vs a K&N filter

Thoughts please.

1. Unlikely

2. Also Unlikely

3. Yes but the service interval for Air filters is 40k so you won't be saving the planet just yet

4. k&N is about £40, paper filter is about £12. You work it out....

These filters also need regular maintainence ie cleaning and oiling (The K&N one has to be oil correctlly or you will damage you MAF

In short I think you will only see the benefit of a panel filter if you are running a remap or tuning box in which case it should help it breath a little better and produce less smog

I just change the OEM one every 10-15k as when I took the first one out at 40k it looked like a lump of coal.

I don't think the washable and oiled ones make sense as the oil isn't exactly what one would call cheap and they need cleaning quite often.

Yeah, I just put a new OEM one in every six months, and purely to reduce the amount of soot coming out of the exhaust rather than to try and improve the performance.

While the environmental angle is admirable, you'd probably find that a) a paper filter will be sorted and gasified these days, and if it DOES end up being landfilled, you'd only be reducing the overall quantity of waste sent to landfill by about 0.0000000004%. So even if EVERYBODY with a car did it, you'd still only be making a 0.01% reduction in landfill waste. Then, of course, there's the fact that the environment is probably far more damaged by producing the oil for a panel filter than it is by producing the paper and rubber for a replacement paper filter...

Fair points, duly noted, just toyed with the idea, I had used one on a car I used to own, although to be fair it was tuned up to the nuts.

Got a green panel filter on my 1.4tdi and never looked back. Going to get a pd160 intake for it very soon.

No gain without a proper intake...

what about the K&N induction kits then? how does that compare to a pd160 intake?

what about the K&N induction kits then? how does that compare to a pd160 intake?

If you want to draw hot air in from inside your engine bay, be my guest!

Seriously, if you're looking to make your car go faster, then a bigger intake or a less restrictive filter will make little or no difference, since diesel engines run on excess air as it is (something like 40% of the oxygen going in isn't used in combustion most of the time). Doing these things will reduce the amount of soot produced, especially when the car is tuned, since the extra fuelling demanded by the tuning 'product' cuts into the amount of excess air drawn in - all a bigger intake and/or less restrictive filter does is redress the balance. These things only give real performance gains on a petrol car that runs a stoichiometric mix of air and fuel. On the other hand, you can increase the power output of a diesel engine from as little as a few pence if you look in other directions!

i used to be a 2 litre ford pinto man, i could make them scream at about 9000rpm and love it (even if it needed a rebuild every few thousand miles), diesel is all new to me.

No worries! There's LOADS on diesel tuning on here, but to give you a quick run-down, there are three main types:

• Analogue tuning box - a resistor is used to alter the fuel temperature INPUT reading, thus spoofing the ECU into overfuelling resulting in more power and more smoke, and can be done for a few pence if you know what you're doing;
  
• Digital tuning box - a 'piggyback' ECU is used to alter the injector OUTPUT signal, but because it's digital, the changes are only made a certain points in the rev range to minimise smoke and maximise power (without doing anything to the turbo) - costs a couple of hundred quid;
  
• Remap - the ECU is reprogrammed, giving the 'rev-dependent' overfuelling of a digital tuning box and also increased turbo boost pressure for even more power - costs a few hundred quid for a generic map, and a bit more for a custom one specific to your engine and other mods - can't be removed easily like the other two so has potential warranty-wrecking powers if your car's quite new...
  

HTH

just fitted a pd160 intake to my car (thanks to jabba), ive fitted induction kits to a few cars with little iff no gains. But on this occasion I can say its worth the money, massive grin factor

can a dealer easily find out if you have had a remap? what are the signs?

can a dealer easily find out if you have had a remap? what are the signs?

For starters, the ECU will record that it's been reprogrammed ('flashed'), and it's not just the dealers that would need to know, but your insurers...

can a dealer easily find out if you have had a remap? what are the signs?

Piece of p*ss, starting with the easiest and going to some a garage wouldn't bother with but insurance probably would if you hadn't declared:

- Do a road test and notice the extra power

- Do a RR run to prove the extra power

- Scan the software chips and find some things are using up what should be empty memory locations or the values are changed

- Read checksums etc and compare to OE software

- Read the number of write cycles on the flash chip

- Download the binary software from the car and do bitwise compares against OEM.

and many many more