Stelling & Hellings air cleaner effectiveness Part Deux

[DanEC]

Originally Posted by cycleguy55

Has anybody ever put these on a flow bench to evaluate how restrictive they really are - or aren't?

Edit: I just found this, posted to https://www.ffcars.com/forums/17-fac...r-cleaner.html by 'mrmustang'. Hmmm....

Back to the original question, and dating back over 18 years
427 center oiler, 10:2:1 compression, 650 holley DB (already dyno tuned) fairly mild street cam as a base for the test on a "chassis" (not engine) dyno. This was done as we were baselining a new chassis dyno at a friends shop and thought it would be interesting to be able to show his customers the difference of what something as simple as an air cleaner could make.

My notes are as follows:

no air cleaner: 322hp
then 14X2 "K&N" air cleaner: 314hp
then 14X4 "green" air cleaner with drop base:324hp
then Stelling and Heller air cleaner (stock filters as we did not have K&N or Green filters in stock at the time):302hp

All of the above were done one after the other. No tweaks or changes where done to the carb or engine timing. Strictly a demonstration for about 20 customers who were at the shop that Saturday. All HP above was measured at the rear wheels.

The car was ERA321, dark blue metallic, running a toploader 4spd and 3:31 rear gear ratio.


Second Strike Air Cleaner Calculator: https://www.secondstrike.com/Technic...leanerCalc.asp

It would be interesting to see a similar comparison on a car with dual 600 quads. One of these S&H filters does seem horribly inadequate (it's basically a Yugo size air cleaner) but my own rational is two of them with a pleated air filters and no restrictive screens on a 500 HP motor would not suffer as much loss. The twin 600 cfm carbs would certainly seem under taxed feeding a 428- 460 FE with a peak rpm in the mid - to high 5,000 rpm range.