First off, a little background...

I am a self proclaimed "car guy". I generally prefer what seems to be known around here as "anti-hybrid".

I recently traded in my 2001 Lincoln LS V8 (complete with loud exhaust, and ghost flames) for a 2006 Civic Hybrid. While I had the Lincoln, I added an open element air filter and realized a gain of 3 to 4 MPG. Considering that I was getting 22 and it came to 25.5, that is a 15% increase in fuel economy.

So here is the question, if I was able to realize a decent MPG gain with a simple air filter (K&N) swap, what potential effects might the same swap have on the Civic Hybrid?

And now the real technical question... Has anyone been able to find replacement air filters for the HCH II yet? I am about to go out and pull the air box apart on mine and get the proper dimensions for it to see if K&N makes a filter based on the dimensions alone. As it stands, after several hours of searching the web, I cannot even find a factory replacement air filter.

I am NOT trying to make it a hot rod by any stretch of the imaginations, but if we could all get 5% to 15% better MPG by spending $35 on our next air filter instead of $5 would you do it?

Any assistance would be great, otherwise, I will keep searching and let everyone know my findings.

Don't bash me for loving my "anti-hybrids", I want to use what I know about getting HP and apply the same train of thought to pulling the potential out of these little gas savers.

 

Do you mean an air intake? I'm sure they sell them. I'm not sure how it would effect your car? I would think that the engineers who developed the design would have considered this if it would have squeezed a few MPG's. My gut tells me it's a waste of time and may raise eyebrows for warranty work.

 

Not an intake, there is no real estate under hood for a true intake. Just a drop in replacement filter that flows more air.

No eyebrows will be raised thanks to the Magnusson/Moss act. http://www.sema.org/main/semaorghome.aspx?ID=8124

Without going into too great of detail and explaining things everyone here is painfully aware of, Fire needs 2 things to be present in order to burn. Fuel and air. Fuel is no good without air. The more air present, the more efficient the burn. The addition of air to any internal combustion engine (intakes, turbo, supercharging) generates horsepower and torque. The more Horsepower and Torque available to a small engine such as ours should result in the engine not needing to work as hard to accelerate or maintain speed. The less effort needed to do these things (in theory) should result in better fuel economy.

As for why manufacturers do not engineer these types of things into the system to get even better fuel economy are too numerous to list but here are the basics...

Cost - As stated in my previous post, a regular drop in (Wix or Autolite) air filter costs the general public roughly $5.00. A good aftermarket air filter (K&N) costs a minimum of $35 depending on the design. I have paid as much as $60 for one. If Honda were to put a regular air filter in 100,000 cars, you could say that they would pay the difference of $500,000 VS $3,000,000.

Warranty - Where as this filter cannot void your warranty, it is not a simple "use once and throw away" type of filter. It requires maintenance on the part of the user in the form of a simple solution cleaning and "oiling". This would become a time and cost consuming issue for dealerships based on the amount of time it takes to actually clean one of these style filters as it requires removal from the car, cleaning with soap and water, air drying, re-oiling, and finally replacement. On a normal day, it could take the majority of the day just to let this item air dry prior to placing it back in the car. Would you (as a service department customer) wait an entire business day without a car for a simple air filter replacement? Would you pay the hourly rate to replace a filter that went from 1 hour to 8 hours of labor that the dealer service department WILL CHARGE EVERY PENNY for?

Conpiracy Theories - We are all aware (or should be by now) of the gentleman who is selling modifications to the Honda Insite called the MIMA-c. This little goodie when installed in an Insite is allowing users to get more than 100 MPG. Now, he is an extremely intelligent man but likely not more intelligent than a whole group of engineers at Honda. So the question is, why would Honda not do this in the first place? It has proven effective and safe to use. It is also extremely inexpensive ($675 at the most and under $500 if you build it yourself). There are a lot of things auto companies COULD do but choose not to. I will let the conspiracy theorists have their fun with this one.

I have noticed a trend when it comes to the typical (not all) hybrid owner. It would appear as though at least 75% of them are afraid of what lies under the hood of their little gas savers. But just like the original "hot rodders" of the 20's and 30's, we stand at the threshold of a new era. We can either sit here and let Honda work on our cars and be content with how they built the cars or we can strive for better. Most horsepower applications work just as well towards fuel economy. I am not saying we need to put fart can mufflers on our cars to get more MPG, but there are minor (not scary) things that can be done in the interest of power/MPG.

As I stated before, I have personally seen gains of 15% increased fuel economy in my previous vehicle with a simple $40 air filter. It paid for istelf after the first 3 tanks of gas and then saved me money ever since. Granted, this was a V8 that was obviously not as efficient as it could be. If we could realize a third of that (5% increase) I would personally see a difference of 47.5 MPG to just shy of 50 MPG. Keep in mind, my car has 3000 miles on it and has not even had its first oil change. If I were to get the advertised average of 50 MPG I could see up to 52.5 to 53 MPG.

Time to go out to the garage and pull that filter out. K&N does not advertise that they produce a replacement for the 2006 Civic or the HCH. But I am willing to bet that they produce one that is 99.9% perfect for the replacement size dimensionally. I will post my findings for all who are interested.

 

I put a K&N layin filter in our Accord. It hurt the mpg and did nothing for HP by the butt dyno. It did make it louder at WOT tho.

 

This makes sense. I've always wondered why the manufacturers would not want to put such a filter on stock. If it were just an additional $30 for a filter you could throw in and forget about, which the manufacturer could get for a quantity discount, then it would make sense to do so even for very marginal fuel savings. However, if it would create another maintenance item that's inconvenient to do in a timely manner, I can see why they would stick with a drop-in replacement paper filter. However, they could also solve the problem of time it takes to re-oil the cotton filters by simply having a few ready to go, and swapping them.

In the past though I have often wondered if the reason the manufacturers don't use those filters is beacuse they might accelerate the long wear and tear on the engine, or some other drawback.

This one has always bothered me as this is a matter of adding a few switches and software. The only reason that system costs as much $600 is because it's very low volume, and must use complicated custom circuitry to "trick" the IMA system into accepting the manual controls. Honda however could have simply included this feature by implement different software ($0 a unit, once developed) and a few switches (maybe $10/unit).

I can understand why they didn't from a marketing position though. They wanted to minimize hassles from confused customers complaining. I'm certain many people would do dumb things like drain their pack in the first five minutes, then have to drive around charging their battery back up, then compain to Honda about crappy mileage.

I do believe however they could have given the driver a few switches, or profiles with different logic, such as a gradual assist for going up long hills, and a more powerful assist for going up shorter ones, similar to how some automatic transmissions have "sport" and "economy" switches on them. These things woudl require almost no attention from the driver, they'd be more idiot proof than manual control, but would still have a lot of the benefits of manual control.

Yes, even a 5% increase would be very nice to see. I suspect that you might not see as much of a difference in a vehicle with computer controlled fuel injeciton as an older V8 though. I'd be interested in seeing what results you get if you do isntall a K&N filter, though.

 

Honda and Toyota are competing to produce the highest MPG hybrid for the money.
They added a lot of expensive, complex, high tech parts (NiH battery, electric motor, etc.) to raise the MPG.

IMHO If a simple $30 filter could raise the MPG that much they would have put it in.

That said I'm anxious to learn if a K&N gets made for our car and if it really does improve MPG.
If so, I'll buy one in a heartbeat.

 

The car I am speaking of was a 2001 Lincoln LS. Although it is an "older V8" the Blackwood software platform used in the ECU was very far ahead of its time. It was also shared at the time with its platform cousins the Ford Thundirbird and Jaguar S-Type. This software was actually used as the "prototype" software for the 2004+ Ford F-150 and 2005+ Ford Mustang. The major difference was that the 3.9 Liter V8 in the Lincoln LS, Ford Thunderbird, and Jaguar S-Type responds very well to induction and exhaust modifications.

Every engine is different. Although psyshack used one in a Honda Accord, there are many factors in place. The first factor is that when one performs a "performance modification" to their vehicle, it generates a tendency to want to utilize said performance modification resulting sometimes in a heavier foot. Other factors can include the ECU programming and its ability to compensate for the additional air intake. Most newer ECU's will compensate for a certain ratio of intake air to maintain the perfect 14:1 Air to fuel ratio. Once too much air is introduced, some older ECU's could not compensate in the proper way resulting in the fuel injection system over-compensating and causing the engine to run rich. This is where psyshack likely saw his issue. Although the heavy foot theory is the oine I am sticking to based on the "by the butt dyno" and "louder at WOT". This would indicate a more aggressive driving style that of course would result in a lower MPG. Now, I will admit if I am wrong and there is a certain level of assumption here so if I am 100% off base, I apologize.

 

K&N does make a filter for the 06, 1.8L Civic motor. I would bet that it would fit our cars. Here is a link. http://www.knfilters.com/news/news.aspx?ID=235

I would be afraid that the oil that is sprayed onto the filter would spray into the throttle body. I've heard of issues with Nissan owners who use oiled filters with air intakes and they had problems. But the issues may have been by the owners over sraying their filters with oil. I don't know.

 

I too found that filter but I need to verify the dimensions.

As far as the throttle body is concerned, it is an issue because people do not stop and understand that more is not always better. I have heard people say that since the oil helps filter the dirt, more oil would mean better filtration. This of course spells disaster with MAF system cars as the oil ends up covering the MAF sensor and generates a signal to the ECU telling it that there is not enough air so it cuts back the fuel cause an overly lean condition. Once a K&N is clean, it is almost white. There only needs to be enough oil to turn the color from white to red. By red, I mean just a shade above pink.

 

Acronym Alert
Acronym Alert

ECU
MAF
?????????????