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TOMS Air Filter for the Stock Air Box
by Blitzo

Intro:
This past September, I took a look at four filters that fit into the stock air box: The OEM stock filter, original TRD throwaway, TRD renewable model, and the K&N.  As it turns out, there was another contender that I overlooked - the TOMS Super Ram II air filter.  I'll take a quick look at this filter before putting them all to some testing.

This is the TOMS replacement air filter.
The bottom is coarse foam and the top is fine foam supported by expanded metal lath.
The TOMS Air Filter:
 This is the one filter that is completely different from all the others.  Instead of the traditional folded material of a traditional filter, this one is constructed of a porous plastic foam.  Since the foam has very little structural integrity of it's own, it also has an expanded mesh structure built into it.  From the picture with the logo on it, the air would be flowing from the bottom up through the foam, pressing the foam against the metal lath.  The dimensions of the filter are about the same as the others, with a thickness of about 1 1/4".  Since this not a folded filter, the surface area cannot be compared with the design of the other air filters.

The close up pictures of the top and bottom show that the two colors are two different types of foam.  The bottom is a very coarse 1-4 mm pore size foam and can be considered a pre filter.  The upper red foam is a very fine pore size of less than 1 mm.  I would guess on average that they are about 0.5 mm.  The white logo is painted on and does clog a few pores on the top side, but not an alarmingly large number of them.

The only vendor I know of selling the TOMS filter at the moment is ShinKai Racing at a cost of $66.50 plus shipping.  Other vendors may carry this or be able to special order it.
Conclusion:
The other four filter options are all flat accordian folded filter material.  The TOMS filter is two different pore sizes of foam.  While the materials may be different, the design goal is the same - filter the smallest particle from the air stream without introducing any more airflow restriction than is necessary to do the job.  Next time we will take a look at how well each of the five filters performs.