Oily Residue on air cleaner element!

How often is every time 15000-35000k’s?

Also what sort of driving do you do mostly?. If it spends a lot of its time in the city sucking dirty Air then nothing abnormal really just the standard run of the mill pollution.

Hi Mike,

I have a Feb 2004 3.0 TD (66K's) that does the same thing, I have not been able to work out why, I will follow this post with interest.
Ben,

The genuine Nissan air filters have a coating of very light oil to trap dirt as part of the filtering process. Check any Nissan vehicle with a genuine filter be it a patrol, pulsar, maxima, navara etc. They will all have the residue that you describe. Often this can be knocked or scrapped off and the filter turned around. When it gets too much it is time for a new filter.
Regards Jon

Hi Mike

Nissan do 2 types of filter for your vehicle, oild and non oild both are the same but no oil on one. Rycro do both filters as well. If you order a filter for your engine you will get an oild filter. If you travel on dusty roads alot get a couple of non oil filters and swap them and blow them out when you fuel up. Dust will always stick to oil your problem is very normal.

Hope this helps

Steve

Gooday Mike, its called road grime ! Absolutely normal. Your vehicle obviously spends most of its time in the city. Fit a snorkel and use snorkel socks, clean them every 3000 km and you'll never see road grime on the filter again.

I reckon Muzzit 'n Stevo are on the rite track..Years ago,after I had my rig for about 9 months, I noticed red dust ( we live on dirt road) inside the "filtered" area of the paper air filter cannister..Not a good sign!..Changed to oiled foam type FinerFilter and never had a whisker of dust in there again..Just be sure to re-oil with the proper "stick" type oil..Important ! After a few years,test the foam for "de-composing" as,if allowed to go too far,it may,if clogged at all,get sucked thru the motor."You sound like you have been down that road Rocky!" "Yeah!" (did'nt it smoke..blue smoke..not good) Have fun..RockyOne

Kike,

I am on my 4th Patrol, and all have done the same with the air filter.
I worried about it first up, but then I learnt that the oily element is doing it's job.

Even with a snorkel you'll get the same result, a sticky substance on the element.

Don't worry about it, it is normal.

Geoff.

G'Day Mike,

Genuine oiled filters are red

Genuine non oiled filters are yellow

Use the red ones

Rolande

Thanks for such helpful responses and advice on "residue on air cleaner element" to all of you - Squizzy, Rolande, Muzzgit, Stevo, Rockyone, Exploder, Chump Boy, Jon P, and Steve069 - and so fast too. I've had a genuine red filter (which I now realise thanks to you) must be an oiled filter - didn't know there was such a thing as it looks like an ordinary paper element. Have now fitted a Unifilter which also developed the same sort of patch in under 300km in same spot - but looks like I can stop stressing about this going on your responses. Thanks again
Mike