I pulled out the pollen filter the other night, and after 3k miles it's looking pretty bad. How often should we change these things? I might go ahead and change mine every 5k?

 

Hmm... Where is it located? I was under the impression it was not as efficient anymore. I'd like to take a look.

 

It's behind the glove-box. If you look it up in your owners manual is shows you how to take it out.

 

K, thank you very much, I'll check it out tomorrow.

 

it depends where you live, if there is a lot of pollen in your area, well guess what, you are going to have to clean/replace your filter more often.

 

Is there someplace online to order pollen filters at a reasonable cost?

 

they don't cost much. at my dealership i can get it for 15 dollars. i am going to change the filter every 10k or every year (which ever comes first)

 

Appreciate this info a lot -- very interested.

It's hard to really know about this subject. I mean, REALLY know. Hardly any of us know exactly what it does, much less how it works. It works silently and mostly without being appreciated; it's kind of like preventive medicine -- you can never tell for sure what it's accomplishing for you. And few of us have anything to compare it to.

For example, BTW -- Does anyone know if air from WITHIN the car gets filtered? Like, air that comes in through the windows or sunroof, or (e.g.) animal hairs that got in the car -- if you close the window and put on the A/C, does that stuff get filtered, or is it just air sucked in through the A/C system that gets filtered?

I sure as hell don't know. And my dealer wasn't sure either.

 

As far as I can tell the only air that goes through the filter is the air coming out the vents. The a/c brings air from the wiper cowl area, and that's when it's passed through the filter.

 

Well, you can set your air conditioning to two different settings, one that brings the air from outside and one from the inside. The one from the inside is most commonly known as Max AC. It takes the cold air from inside and recalculates it; this is the best one in my opinion. Then the regular AC takes the air from outside; this is where I can actually smell the exhaust from other vehicles at times, like when behind a bus. My car doesn't have a filter unfortunately, so I leave it on Max AC for I don't start inhaling fumes.

 

You must be driving a ford. I think only american cars are the ones with the "MAX AC". My Mazda Tribute (aka Ford Escape) has the same thing. The TSX doesn't have the "max ac" it just has a recirculation button, which is the exact same thing. The problem with running in the recirculation mode is that it causes moisture to build up in the vents/etc.

Mine only comes on when I first turn the A/C on. After that the automatic climate control shuts it off. It will come on if I set the temp to low.

 

That's what I thought too. When he said that, all I could think of was my old Chevy Nova. REAL old. But, I knew what he meant (and so did you).

But it doesn't mean we can't pull his chains a little.