Air intake or replace air filter?

I've got a K&N CAI and Outerwears Pre Filter (Soon to have a K&N Dry Charger Pre filter )on my supercharged 4cyl . I've got (2) filters one on the truck and one cleaned & oiled ready to install

I change filters every 5k miles at ea oil change and clean my MAF also at that interval . I've been using K&N products since the early 80's with no issues and even have a K&N filter on my Drag Race car

Here's a couple pics of my K&N CAI filter on my truck that I recently changed out with another clean/oiled filter . As mentioned previously the filter was on my truck for 5k miles or almost 1.5 years


New k&n filter and cleaned Outerwear pre filter



As you can see very clean old filter with 5k miles and dust/dirt only showing on chrome cap




Inside of filter also very clean and chrome cap no dirt and filter shows daylight thru it




As for the CAI Tube there is no dust or dirt inside the tube nor is the MAF dirty

 

I am a HUGE fan of dynos. When we talk “feel” of more power here’s my input.

In my first year of racing I was tuning everything every weekend because I knew more than everyone else. One weekend I went a different direction and came back to the pits and told my buddy we needed to go back to the old setup because it was such a turd. He said NO. Then told me the guy I was chasing every weekend couldn’t catch me and I pulled away from him where normally it was the other way around. My butt dyno doesn’t know shit.

I ended up switching racebikes and took it to a real dyno. We did all sorts of airbox tuning. In the end the stock paper filter was best with no mods. My K and N gave me a slight increase at top end with a HUGE hole in the midrange. It hit like nitros but that was due to the huge midrange drop with a quick rev after. Fact is if it feels slow it probably is because it makes power everywhere. Smooth power feels like a turd and lack of midrange feels powerful and fast due to the hit when the power recovers.

So do whatever makes you happy. If you only care about “the feel” then go ahead and do whatever you think will give that to you. If you truly care about power do before and after dyno runs the same day. Numbers don’t lie. Butt dynos do.