Keep Your Engine Breathing Easy
S&B Filters Replacement Air Filter
Story and Photos By: Brandon Bunch
I know we say this a lot, but dirty, filthy air is something all of us as off-road enthusiasts just have to deal with. We as humans can choose to tough it out and breathe the dirty air, or protect our lungs with the many options of dust masks, bandanas, or fresh air pumpers that are available. But when it comes to our engines, the options are few, and there’s definitely no option to not keep your engine’s air clean (unless you want to be constantly forking out thousands of dollars to rebuild blown up engines).
Obviously, any machine you buy from a manufacturer comes with an engine air filter that will do the job and do it well (as long as you don’t let it become one solid dirt clod), but that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement. S&B Filters is arguably the leader in the arena of air filtering products, and their shining star for the UTV industry is the extremely effective Particle Separator System. By working as a “pre-filter” (without having an actual filter) it supplies air to your standard air box and filter that has already been scrubbed of about 94% of the dust and other particulate matter significantly prolonging the time between cleaning or replacing the air filter.
The potential downfalls of the Particle Separator system are the amount of precious real estate it takes up on the car, a hefty financial investment ($399.00 MSRP, although it will save you lots of money on air filters), and also, some people may not be fans of the additional noise produced by the system’s internal fans (pun intended). However, S&B Filters also produces upgraded stock-replacement filters for several of the most popular UTV models, and here we have the unit designed for 2014-2019 Polaris RZR XP 1000 and XP Turbo Models.
This drop-in air filter is constructed from a dry cleanable media, rated to be cleaned up to 10 times when done properly, it features very pretty red, white and blue rubber end caps, and is oversized to fill the larger airbox cavity of the XP 1000/Turbo models. Per S&B’s published test results, the larger size and advanced dry synthetic media allows the filter to flow 6.56% more air than the stock Polaris filter while being able to capture 11.13% more dust before the filter must be serviced. No, you won’t feel any performance gains from switching to the S&B Filter, but it does operate at a 100% efficiency rating compared to the stock filter’s 99.97% rating, which in theory should keep your engine running smooth for much longer (clean engine internals are happy engine internals), and the increase in capacity does mean you won’t have to clean or replace the filter as often.
After already removing and cleaning the S&B Filter once, we noticed there was zero dust present on the inside of the intake tube leading to the turbo, and we will continue to save money by not having to buy replacement OEM Polaris filters every time we service our machines. At $75.00, we see the S&B Filter to be a solid investment in prolonging the life of your engine while keeping your wallet fat and happy. Head to SBFilters.com to find their full published test results or to purchase a filter.
