I have 19,000 miles on my 08 Vert and I checked the air filter today. It was absolutely spotless.... I mean CLEAN I removed it from the holder and nothing. I don't believe this is normal.....what could be wrong? The car runs very good..... in fact I had it to the track with my club last month and I ran it 4 times (1/8 mile) and the best time was 8.2 with all the nannies and A/C on.

 

Those LS3s don't draw in as much air.

Long live the LS2!!!!!

 

Mine is an LS2. After 10,000 miles they are both in excellent shape. Blew them out with compressed air and put them back in. The new ones are still in the box. It was the same with the cabin air filter. I think during the next oil change, I'll change all three air filters and be done with it. Peace of mind.

 

you drove circles in a clean room.

 

The condition of your air filter will greatly depend on the environment you drive in. Also, opening up the shroud for direct air will expose more dirt to the air filter vs to the stock enclosed air compartment where air enters from the side frame rails. Your all good!

 

With the Donaldson PowerCore filter that is OE on the LS3/LS7/LS9, it is difficult to see the condition of the filter. The filter consist of parallel tubes ~4-5 inches long. Every other tube is closed off on the opposite ends of the filter, and the air flows down one tube, through the tube's wall, and then exits the adjacent tube. The tube's walls are porous so the air flows through, yet traps the dirt. Because the filter has depth, the actual surface area of the filter media is very high. You can't see very far down in the tubes and that is where the dirt would accumulate.

http://www.donaldson-filters.com/061691.pdf

 

I thought it was "optimistic" that LS3 OEM air filters are supposed to be good for 50k miles. But your experience suggests maybe it's for real.

 

I have 21K on my 10/12/04 and I'll see how dirty mine is tomorrow...this includes the cabin filter too!!!

 

27,000 on mine and they still look good. I live at the beach and I'm sure that helps.

 

I checked the air filters in my two cars last weekend. My 2008 SRX has 36K and the filter was filthy dirty, so I checked the vette which also has 36K and they looked almost brand new.

 

As we know, the larger the filter(surface area) the longer the service life and the greater the air it will flow. A small filter is going to clog quicker then a larger one, under the same identical service conditions, as well as flowing less CFM. If you look at the Donaldson filter , you will see that the area that you view is made up of thousands of little triangles.

I didn't measure mine to get exact figures, but lets say each of the equilateral triangles has 3/16" sides. The area would then equal .0152 sq in. This would mean there are 65.79 of the little triangles in one square inch. But, the filter is three dimensional. If you look at the filter it is about four inches deep. Back to the triangles. Since each of the three sides is 3/16" long the circumference of the triangle would be 9/16". 9/16" times 4 "(length of the triangle) = 2.25 square inches of surface area in each of those little triangular tubes.

Since we have already determined that there is 65.79 of these little triangles in one sq in then there is 148 square inches of filtering media in one sq in of surface area (2.25 sq in times 65.79). To keep it simple, let's say that the filter is 4" by 15" on the surface. That is 60 square inches of surface area(that's the part of the filter you see if you look at it installed in the housing). You don't see the 4" depth of the Donaldson filter unless you remove the filter from the housing.

60 square inches of surface area(the filter) times the 148 square inches of surface area(the amount of surface area of the 65.70 triangles) = 8,880 square inches of total surface area. Since the triangles share common sides, the actual surface area is ~50% of that which would equal 4,440 square inches of surface area. A pleated filter would have to be approximately 5 ft by 6 ft (stretched out to remove the pleats) to equal that. Now take a pleated filter like the Attack Blue or a K&N and calculate the total square inches of filtering media and compare to the Corvette's Donaldson filter.

Is it any wonder that the Donaldson flows so well while lasting 50,000 miles.

Hopefully my math is correct. If it's not, I'm sure I'll be corrected.

 

Nope....down here in NC we drive normally. NJ has the traffic circles and in DC which is part of VA where you are from THATS where they drive in circles.....mostly in cigar smoke filled rooms. However, last Tuesday, I believe even those rooms will be aired out and everyone will drive straight.

 

Both air filters and cabin filter were air compressed out and all are as good as new! Next time I'll get new ones.

 

This is odd because in mine every time I take out the air filters (stock set up) they have a bunch of sand in them. My cabin filter gets pretty dirty too.

 

Great info.

 

At about 22k miles, my cabin air filter was pretty filthy.
At about 24k miles, my engine air filter looked almost new.