That plunger that is on the air filter housing. Its supposed to show the red/orange part as the filter gets dirty.
I have had 4 gm trucks in a row and I've never seen the red. It has always been green.
At 54,000 miles, I decided to change the air filter today on the van as I was doing some other things to it. Even though the indicator was green, the old filter did seem dirty with noticeable more darkness at the point where the air enters the housing.
I'm wondering if I wasted $40 and should've waited for the red to show, or if this was something many others would do with the original filter past 50,000 miles.
2004 2500 GMC Savanna 6.0 / 3.73
2001 Mallard 30E
Wife,
Triplets born 10-14-02 (2 girls, one boy)
Older daughter born in 1985
Choc lab named Kia (No, NOT after the car!) http://mywebpages.comcast.net/babies3/index.htm
Also checked the trans fluid. Looked and smelled like you could put it back in the bottle and pass it off as new. I was wondering if that should be changed anyway with a filter too.
The filter minder has been used on all OTR trucks for years.
Any restriction that pulls in the plunger any at all, is a negative pressure that is robbing you of airflow into your engine.
My golden rule for filters, and lubricants is....You can't change them too often. Or in simpler terms, there is no minimum mileage at which you can change it.
Do as Engineer suggests. I change our unit every 1.2 years regardless of indicator (however, we do only 5000 miles max ave. a year).
Tranny fluid: follow your owner's manual. If you are using your truck as in 'severe duty', change it out as indicated; if you are using your truck 'regular duty', do the smell and blotter test, and if this analog indicator shows negative, change it out. Otherwise, if analog test proves good change it out as per manual.
I've never had a gas engine'd GM pull that filter minder into red. I think they are fake. I've put 140,000 miles on my GM pickup and never saw that thing move. A diesel consumes much much more fresh air since there is no throttle plate.
1998 Chevy ECSB, K1500, 5.7 V8, AM trans temp and vacuum gauges. Scangauge. HD light harness with 4hi. Timbren overloads. 168,000 miles.
Just had my air filter changed a couple days ago. It was reading in the green but my mechanic decided to check it out. Turns out you are right, the indicator means little. Mine was a mess and needed to be replaced.
Normally on my duramax the indicator is still green at 15K miles when I change filter. (6.6 Duramax/Allison) However, one summer when I drove lots of dusty roads, it turned red in about 7K miles, I reset it to see what would happen, and a few days later it was red again, so I guess it works. I suspect that if you never get on the throttle for any length of time it may be pretty dirty and not turn red, since it looks at pressure differential and max pressure differential will be at or near full load WOT max RPM.
I changed my 03 Chevy at 36k and again about 76k. It looked like it could have went longer, but was fairly dirty. I played with the red indicator with my mouth to see if it would work. It will work doing that, but I've never seen the red from natural use.
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