I mentioned this in another thread, where I spoke about MAF cleaning, but it may get lost in the noise and could be of interest to those who may not see that thread. Today I bought a new air filter and when I installed it, the lid was quite hard to close. At first I thought that I'd mis-aligned something, but then it was quite obvious that I hadn't and something was different, so I took out the new filter and compared it to the old.
What I found was the rubber ring (not the double lip ring) has been increased in thickness by almost 100%, ergo the greater effort required to lock the lid. I thought that maybe the ring on the old filter had compressed with age, but that doesn't appear to be the case. So all that I can surmise is that Nissan has reviewed the filter design and increased the thickness of the ring to give the filter better sealing.
The difference is very noticeable and I haven't had a filter like this previously. In all other respects, the filter appears to be identical. Maybe that also explains the very fine layer of dust that had accumulated on the MAF, with the earlier design being prone to some leakage.
Cheers
Ray
What I found was the rubber ring (not the double lip ring) has been increased in thickness by almost 100%, ergo the greater effort required to lock the lid. I thought that maybe the ring on the old filter had compressed with age, but that doesn't appear to be the case. So all that I can surmise is that Nissan has reviewed the filter design and increased the thickness of the ring to give the filter better sealing.
The difference is very noticeable and I haven't had a filter like this previously. In all other respects, the filter appears to be identical. Maybe that also explains the very fine layer of dust that had accumulated on the MAF, with the earlier design being prone to some leakage.
Cheers
Ray