|
re: Just wondering if a K&N filter investment is worth the 34 dollars?
It's almost a part of USA culture that those that design cars are without knowledge and that any old high school dropout can go to K-Mart and buy parts that will improve his vehicle.
This "culture" is very extensively promoted and taken advantage of by the aftermarket.
Now, it is true that your Volvo is designed (well) to be X--it's indeed "optimized"-- and you may wish Y, but it should be obvious if you modify your car to Y you will no longer have X and will in all liklihood experience tradeoffs where something is lost when something else is gained. And, I don't just mean the $$ "given" (not invested) to the aftermarket.
Yes, it is interesting that there is simultaneously a "culture" around Volvos that they are safe, practical, well designed, fun, etc. cars and yet another approach that Volvo designers instead did all the wrong things and "just didn't optimize" the cars. They are, after all, engineers and we don't like or trust people with education and degrees and experience, right? Yup, those "smarts" we assign ourselves for owning Volvos aren't the same thing. Yes, those Volvo engineers just couldn't stand up to the bean counters, but we are men of steel when it comes to aftermarket hype.
Corollary to this--although Volvo isn't it--there are cars out there where cost is no object. New cars, I mean, where all the latest technology is known and available and incorporated. Funny, then, isn't it, that on those cost-no-object cars one doesn't find K&N filters either? In fact, one finds more or less the same kind of filters Volvo specifies. But, we don't let little "facts" like this stand in the way of the aftermarket "religion" and the shade tree mechanic mythology, do we?
Note: Please don't think I despise the aftermarket. They sell you ego gratification and there's nothing wrong with that. Yes, you get to think you, personally, have beaten the system, and that's a precious thing. They just don't sell you a physical improvement in the case of K&N, and there may be other costs--engine wear, fouled air mass sensor--as well. Isn't usually ego gratification the most expensive thing?
|
