The Garage 288

FOCUS Filters 22
FILTERS TO
GET YOU
THROUGH
THE YEAR
IT’S A big market, bringing
in regular work, and
its margins aren’t too
bad. And often they’re
easy to change – welcome
to the world of filters.
Joining the more traditional
air, oil and fuel filters
are the more recent addition
of cabin filters. Once they
were a rare occurrence, but
with more and more cars being
fitted with air-conditioning
over the last two decades
demand has increased dramatically.
Yet cabin filters are
still often forgotten about
despite their safety role.
The legacy of once being
difficult to replace lives
on, with many workshops
steering clear of
getting involved. But as
car design has evolved
changing cabin filters
is, on the whole, not the
tricky, frustrating job it
once was.
It’s easy to regard
cabin filters as a purely
spring and summer component,
but being part of
a car’s heating and ventilation
system means it
is working all year round.
The Garage’s Richard
Barnett takes a look at the
different roles filters play
in a vehicles life and why
it’s important to get them
changed at least once a
year.
That means it can become
clogged and with that comes
windows that mist up, and
so comes reduced vision.
First Line’s Borg and Beck
recommends changing cabin
filters every 12,000 miles
or once a year, and says
that with two types available
workshops can offer their
customers a choice.
The two types are standard
and activated carbon.
Standard filters are made
from fully-synthetic nonwoven
fabric, filtering out
small particles, and as the fibres
are charged they attract
those particles. Activated
carbon filters trap particles
but also harmful gases including
carbon monoxide
and nitrogen oxide. Activated
carbon retains unpleasant
smells too, meaning they
do not enter the car’s
interior.
“If your customers
choose not to
replace the cabin
filter whilst the vehicle
is in for its
routine service,
then they need to be
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