Don't know how applicable, or even correct this is, but it makes sense.

A friend of the family has a fleet of wreckers, mostly 1 ton units that get a lot of hard service. He said they have started swapping out air filter elements on a regular basis, they keep several per truck, and change them at the start of each shift. At first I was pretty puzzled by his comment, but the more he talked, the more it made sense, and is backed up by his 'real world' product testing.

The theory is, the combination of (intake) vacuum and snow or wet spray being pulled in, and the cold / hot cycles as the engine heats up, and then cools down after shut-down, combine to draw a lot of moisture into the air filter element. As soon as this moisture hits the magic 32° temperature all that moisture turns into ice crystals. This plugs the filter and reduces the amount of air the filter allows past it.

He says that they get, on average, based on testing they did at first, between 10% & 20% better mileage by having a clean dry filter element in the truck instead of a half frozen one.

I suspect that fact that each element is blown clean with an air hose also makes a big difference, but he swears by changing the air filter element for a dry one.

He says he has also tested (using a wood workers meter) the moisture levels in the elements before and after shifts and found a huge difference in the levels.

Best of luck.

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