this from my brother, the world's best mechanical engineer, when i asked him about possibly buying a reusable air filter (with a 1M mile guarantee) and then continually cleaning it every oil change for the life of the car.
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re: Reusable air filters SUCK
Reusable air filters fall under the broad umbrella of aftermarket automotive equipment that is almost unequivocally bad. My wife bought one of these for her Yaris without my knowledge. Her gas mileage dropped a couple MPG.
Air intakes are extensively engineered by car companies to optimize air flow and minimize noise in the engine compartment. They might have a few thousand hours of engineering in this system. The aftermarket guys think they're working hard if they throw 200 hours at a problem. K&N makes this reusable filter material then repackages it for 200 different cars. I'm sure they don't even check if it affects HP, noise, or mpg. They just check if it fits. You'll have people tell you that they are great. Ask them how they know that.
I believe my wife's car suffered because it was highly engineered for gas mileage and the K&N filter caused more resistance to incoming air flow (and possibly different flow such as turbulence).
Some of the aftermarket car parts guys make aftermarket motorcycle parts. EVERY aftermarket part used on the Indian Motorcycle had issues. And there were a lot of them. Fuel petcocks, fuel caps, coils, brakes etc, etc. Aftermarket automotive parts are underengineered.
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