air cleaner. filter vs oil bath

[davidh]

I bought a 66 pu. It has the original oil bath air cleaner. Is there supposed to be an element in there along with the oil or just oil? Would it run better with the paper filament? The motor is a 250 6cyl. Seems like I've seen ppl put paper filalments and keep the oil bath look. Just want to here what you guys have found works well..

[jason65]

I think it's what ever you want. We got some old f700 and c60 rolling around here and they still got their oil filled air breathers. But everything after that is paper filter. I would think the paper filter would offer you less resistance to air flow.

[Corts60]

There is a filtering media that is permanently inside your oil bath air cleaner. That style air filter does the job just fine, most people swap to paper filters because they go longer without attention and aren't a mess to clean.

The oil bath filter media needs to be soaked in kerosene every couple thousand miles to break down all the old oil and dirt caught up in it and then allowed to air dry. Then just pour new oil to the fill line in the air cleaner ( I believe the oil used is pretty thick like gear oil) and your good to go.

The theory behind their operation is that when the air is pulled down through the opening in the bowl, it has to make a 180 degree turn up towards the filtering media and into your carb. Well, all the particles that are in the air are too heavy from the velocity to make that turn so they crash and stick into the oil at the bottom, allowing only clean air to make the turn up.

I am keeping mine simply because my drivetrain is all original and that is the look I am going for. If your not concerned with the period correctness, then I would swap to a paper element.

Hope this helps.