Like most of your friends in McHenry, you probably have a little cabin fever. That's a good time to think about changing your car's cabin filter.

By the time of year, it’s not uncommon for folks in McHenry to have a touch of cabin fever. Winter tends to drive us indoors. Even for those who enjoy outdoor activity, skiing, ice skating, snowmobiling, and such, they don’t spend us much time outside as they do in the summer.

While the approach of spring weather in McHenry offers escape help for those with cabin fever, maybe this is a good time to remember to change your cabin filter in your car, truck or SUV.

‘Cabin filter? What’s that?’ you say.

There are a number of filters in your car, truck or SUV and they have different purposes. You have an oil filter that filters dirt and fibers from the engine oil that is critical to the lasting good performance of your engine. There’s also a fuel filter that keeps debris out of the fuel injectors or carburetor in your vehicle. There’s also an air filter that keeps detritus material in the air from entering your engine.

There are other filters in your car, truck or SUV, too. For instance, the PCV valve is actually a filter (PCV stands for Positive Crankcase Ventilation). The vehicle may also have a breather element that works with the PCV valve to reduce foreign elements in the vapor emissions. Then there’s the transmission filter.

Like the oil filter, the transmission filter cleans particles out of the transmission oil. 

All of these filters are critical to the operation of your car, truck or SUV. They all perform similar duties – reducing foreign particles from messing up the works in the engine and transmission. But, while similar, the cabin filter is a bit different.

The cabin filter also reduces foreign particles from entering into a part of your vehicle. That part is, logically, the cabin. And what do we find in the cabin? You and your loved ones, of course.

The cabin filter takes dust, mold spores and pollen out of the air that enters the cabin. In other words, it improves the air you breath while driving down the road. In the process, it reduces the amount of dust and dirt that settles in the interior of your car, truck or SUV. 

While you should check your owner’s manual for when to change your cabin filter, a general rule is every 12 months or 12,000 miles.

With a fresh cabin filter, you’ll have cleaner air when you escape cabin fever as this McHenry winter winds to a close.