Change your Interior Cabin Air Filter...

[artguy]

If you haven't checked or changed your interior cabin filter lately...take the time.

Here is what mine looked like next to the new one...


I recently bought this car and I don't know if the previous owner, or those before him, even new there was one.

Not in the pict were all the leaves and crap that was in the filter housing with that filthy thing. I'm surprised I got any air through it before!

I can breathe now baby!

[Macv]

Every month or so one of these pops up. Good think too, keeps me reminded.

[mamilapon]

Do I have one?

[E34N]

Do I have one?

no. only available on 91+

(what is your production date.. just to make sure.)

[Sam-Son]

wow ok I was looking through bentley and saw this and I was gonna do it a month or so ago but never got around to it. Now I really think I ought to

[repenttokyo]

I bought one 2 months ago and have been trying to work up the courage to install it.

[attack eagle]

easy... takes about 20 minutes or so. See vfaq in the archives.

[repenttokyo]

cool, thanks - i will. i had read somewhere that it was a nightmare to get under the dash in terms of tightness, and that scared me off.

[artguy]

Don't be scared of it, the job is easy...and well worth doing.

It's not so tight actually doing the replacement...it's tight if you want to look where the filter goes. I'm a pretty big guy and I wanted to get a good look at the parts and take some pictures, so I learned to be a contortionist...but it was actually kind of fun learning something new about my car.

You should be able to do the job with a phillips head screw driver and a T15 Torx star head screw driver. There is only one star head screw and it is on the bottom of the plastic cover plate that goes over the filter area which makes it air tight and holds the filter in place.

20 minutes is about right. I took a bit longer because I wanted to photograph things and clean all the parts and nooks and crannys really well.

Just remember not to force anything as you put it all back together. The filter will take some gentle persuasion both ways to get past some parts, but not a big deal.

The hardest part I found was putting my glove box back on. My advice would be to sit in the passenger seat and put both arms under the box as you put it back in. This will support it and allow your hands to be at the back clipping the clips on again. I don't even know what to call these clips but they are pretty ingenious. There is a quick-release lever on the bottom of each one. When pulled toward the seat, it releases the "aligator jaws" that grab around the metal rods behind the glove box. This release also losens the clip so it can slide out of the glove box's slot. You can also adjust the way the glove box closes by releasing these clips and pushing the box in the proper position and then reingaging the quick-release arms. When you see it, this will all make sense...trust me.

[t.wak]

Mine has been ordered for the next service