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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Air cleaners

My car has the standard frying pan air cleaners. Is there any benefit in fitting anything else?
Roger D

Saucepan, how deep are your frying pans. 😁

If you replace the paper fitters regularly and timely with good quality replacements, and keep your carbs reasonable clean (but that applies with any filters fitted) then for a standard car they're fine.

Keeps the induction noise down too.

If you have an uprated exhaust and other bits you might see an extra bit f a horse with others but regular, timely, fully servicing and maintenance of the whole car with correct setting up will get better gains.
Nigel Atkins

Yes, for 2 reasons:

1. The paper elements are not made for high air flow.
2. The 90º edge to the carb mouth reduces the effective size, because of turbulence.

All this is explained, with test figures, in David Vizard's now ancient book. I use the K&N cone filter, with very fine mesh element that only needs cleaning very rarely. I have added a bell mouth which smooths the entry to the carb - this is often called a stub stack. A long intake stack is not much better, unless you get to a really long one which provides ram charging.
Les Rose

Nigel, You want to see my frying pans, you wouldn't believe!I have an Oselli stage 2 motor so maybe something different is justified. Perhaps.
I'll have a look at the K&N filters although a quick look at Moss europe shows them at €200-300!
Roger D

Roger,
you really want a good manifold and exhaust system to take advantage of the K&N filter(s), which night also necessitate different needles.

The (short) stub stacks to me seem to add to the sound, how much they contribute overwise I'm not sure but they're kinda built in to what I call the plate K&N filter (Moss, 'Sports' air filters, NCA) one filter that covers both carbs.

On my car on the rolling road it was found the K&N pancake filters (Moss, 'Performance' Air Filter) with stubs stacks was slightly better than the all-in-one K&N plate filter, but not by much.

Don't forget Moss aren't the only supplier by a long way.

midget 1275 PAIR K & N PANCAKE AIR FILTERS INC STUB STACKS 1275 56-9121 - £129.95 inc VAT - https://mgbhive.co.uk/product/34-midget-pair-k-n-pancake-air-filters-filter-kit-1275/

You can get stub stacks from a tenner, they don't have to be smooth IIRC. (ETA: I've just noticed they're included in above, jolly good, not shown in photo though.)

Then you heed to tune and possibly sort different needles.

Some put K&N filters inside the sauce/frying pans so do check first.

Note, you'll need even more so, regular, timely, full servicing and maintenance of the whole car with correct setting/tuning up to get and keep the gains.



Nigel Atkins

K&N are highly recommended.

Don't be tempted by the cheap (no name) chrome pancake filters with foam filters, which don't flow well and don't filter particularly well, either.
Dave O'Neill 2

Agree with Dave.

K&Ns last virtually forever if looked after, so don't discount buying secondhand. For my Riley, I bought one from the small ads (it was that long ago!) which with a regular clean and re-oiling has lasted me for years.
Peter Allen

Thanks for the comments. It seems as though the cost for a potential gain is a bit high. I'll give it some thought.
Roger D

Roger,
don't forget to check inside your existing filter housings as there might already be K&N filters if the engine is a stage 2.

I once bought a K&N element filter for a car to find when I opened the filter box on the car there was already one fitted, much to my surprise.

Stage 2 means different things to different people what do Oselli list as stage 2 work?
Nigel Atkins

Roger D
On a general 'parts and accesories' note.
As you are in France, for parts and accesories, would you be better served by the likes of Anglo Parts or Dimora?

Midget and Sprite Club members get discounts at various suppliers.

Depending upon what you want for your car those models that share parts with other makes are often served better by suppliers for those makes even though the parts are the same for instance 1098 & 948 clutches are vastly cheaper at Morris Minor dealers. Savings over £100 being made!

I recently posted some of my release bearings in France, to French Midget / Sprite owners, to save on postage and paperwork as, I understand from firends resident in France, post and paperwork is a problem at present.

Alan
Alan Anstead

Post from UK to France certainly is a problem at the moment. I have recently had two items "lost" which never arrived. One was from Amazon who agreed to refund the money three days after the due date of delivery and another from a UK firm who were less keen to make a refund until their claim against ParcelForce was settled. It has now been sorted.

It is a mystery what happens to these items,in the second case the item was shown on the ParcelForce tracking site as having left the UK and on the Collisimmo(the French postal organisation) site as awaiting arrival from the UK. It has never arrived.

In France Oscaro is OK for some items and also Auto-Doc who seem to have a presence in Germany. I haven't heard of Dimora, I'll look them up.
Roger D

I was lucky recently and found a pair of mint saucepan filters on eBay with nearly new K&N filter elements in them. Paid about £40 for them - the filters are £50 each I think!

Anyway, I plan to use them on my (I guess what could be classed as stage 2) 1275 saucepans with some full radius stub stacks. Just not got round to it yet! Probably be next year now.

I don’t think they will be as good as two separate K&N deep pancake filters but hopefully will be about as good as you can get whilst keeping a standard look.

John Payne

Roger
Apologies. It should be Limora.
Alan
Alan Anstead

If you use the car as normal - no. If you want to go racing, then yes.
Oggers

Oggers,

Not racing ,been there done that and enjoyed it immensely, just "fast road" these days.
Roger D

This thread was discussed between 16/10/2021 and 18/10/2021

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

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