I received this email last night and decided to post it here. I don't respond to most private requests for tech support, I believe that these questions should be seen by everyone, so we can all learn, debate or share our stories.

quote:

Hello,
I am writing for a friend of mine who owns a Barth diesel pusher (not sure of model). He drives it on gravel roads quite often and finds that his engine air filter plugs frequently due to the swirling dust cloud behind his coach and the placement of the engine air intake. Has anyone else experienced this and/or come up with a fix? Thanks.

I have a similar problem; my only solution to date is to change the filter elements frequently (every ~6K miles), but I use a very fine element (Wix). I don't know of any practical place to where to relocate the intake itself.

One possible solution is a Donaldson, but its website is terrible for matching air cleaners with applications. I got a print from the local dealer of the dimensions for the one that might fit my Barth, but haven't made a template yet to be sure. Anyway, many of the Donaldsons have a cyclone prefilter, that spins some of the dust out before the element.

Without knowing the setup or seeing a picture, it would be hard to even think of a suggestion. But, there's gotta be a way.

However, many air filter elements are changed sooner than necessary. I am a believer in using a Filter Minder.

Rusty's suggestion of a Donaldson is right on target. When I raced buggies in the desert, the Donaldson was very popular. Oil analysis proved it solved my problems. It had an inlet pattern that forced dust out of the air by centrifugal force, and the dust was manually dumped by squeezing a whoopee cushion-like valve.

I experience the same issue, the air cleaner filter and inlet is situated normally (in the Breakaway) very low in the air intake at the rear. As such, it really collects the dirt and quickly.

When I added fans to the rear grill to improve the flow of cooler air, I rotated the air cleaner and the inlet as high as possible in the opening. It helped a lot but even so, I have to change the air filter after a few miles trek up and down some of the roads that I have to travel to set up timing equipment for the races. At $50 a pop that gets expensive. I have thought about going out the back and up to the top but that would really be ugly, that is about the only way to get clean air back there. When traveling slowly, the main engine fan really kicks up a lot of dirt and it swirls around a lot!

After the modification:



What I do now is carry two filters, one that is fresh for traveling and the other for going up and down the gravel roads. I also have looked into the Donaldson approach but don't know where to put it to be effective. Still looking to get more cooler air and those openings are only so big.

I can't remember exactly what it looked like but on an Allis Chalmers 5040 or 5050 diesel I used to have there was a canister around the filter. The dirty air spun out the heavy dust to the bottom collector pan before entering the filter. I would guess John Deere does the same thing, probably better as would Cat. You might take a look at these options.

I have always been a believer in overwraps over a paper filter element. On my gasser I use a Baldwin polyester fiber overwrap, which gets washed periodically. My Filter Minder says my paper element is very happy, indeed.

Is there room for similar on the Breakaways? Could a larger diameter outer housing be made up to allow a foam or polyester overwrap?

Again, desert racing, this time on motorcycles, I used Filtron oiled foam overwraps, and pulled it off when the dust got too thick. I used two or three overwraps for a really bad silty course, removed them one at a time as needed, and often ended up with just the OEM paper filter. This may sound like overkill, but on a ball and roller bearing two-stroke, clean air is doubly important.