Well between the busy holiday season and the end of the riding season events that I could attend I had not much driving time to valuate the filters. So one night I brainstormed and come up with this idea to test the filters under severe conditions which our buggies will never go through.
Any one who has ever used a bead blaster using Aluminum Oxide media knows of the fine dust produced as the media brakes down for if a recovery system is not used the room will fill with a dusty cloud in a hurry where everything gets coated with a light grey dust in a 20'X20' shop and even with a closed door my office will get a lighter coat for the dust seems to find its way through the smallest cracks. My recovery system is a shop vac in which I use the media revovery bag so as not to destroy the vac since even the hepa filter used will allow the fine dust through and into the vacume motor.
I made an adapter to reduce the 3 1/2" opening for the recovery duct down to 2" then removed the mesh filter and mounted the R2C filter to it. I then ruber banded a coffee filter to the end of the hose which connects to the duct. I then blasted 2 GY6 cases as well as two heads taking appx. 1 1/2 hours to do. The last 1/2 hour of blasting you can hear the vac's motor pitch change due to the filters restriction. After blasting I removed the hose from the duct and had no signs of media dust in the coffee filter. I removed the filter which now weighed about 3 pounds and tapped the filter getting the bulk of the dust off it before taking outside to blow clean. It had taken a good 30 minutes of blowing with 45psi to not see any traces of dust and the filter looks brand new again. So in my opinion I am really impressed with how this filter trapped the very very fine dust as well as how long it lasted but it did not tell me how it compared to a UNI or K&N filter so I duplicated the same test using each of them as well as a fresh coffee filter and pre filters over both filters.
The next piece I was to blast was a CVT cover, the UNI did not fare well for the filter was plugged before I blasted less then 1/3 of the cover. The coffee filter was no longer white with traces of oil and dust present. The K&N was better for I was able to complete not only the outside of cover but also the inside before it was plugged about like the UNI. The coffee filter had no traces of oil and I really had to look to find any fine dust particles.
Acessment
The R2C filter seemed to have less restriction as compared to the UNI and K&N filters all in their clean state. The R2C had taken on much much more then the UNI and K&N before getting really restricted. The R2C had NO signs of dust getting past it, whereas the UNI and K&N did. My findings find the R2C to be superior to the UNI or K&N using my extreme condition test. One more note, all filters used were the same dimentions except the K&N was the tapered type used. The R2C used no oil, traps more dirt and filters much finner particle then our buggies will be exposed to unless operated in a giant blaster.
TOM
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