i decided the clean my MAF today and while i was at the store, i picked up a better air filter for my CAI. boy did i make a good choice to replace the filter. when i took it out, i saw this.........



rusted to hell! as i took the pipes apart there was "rust dust" collected on the MAF screen and in some of the joints of the intake piping. i can only imagine that some of it made its way into the engine. not sure how bad that is, but i replaced the filter with this one.



its all stainless steel mesh, no fabric to collect moisture and no oil to foul the MAF.

anyways, moral of the story is, don't use cheap filters.

jim

 

^ I can vouch for this! I had a Ractive SRI on my Camry with a cheap-@$$ filter that rusted over time.

 

Where in THE hell is your filter located? Do you not open your hood....ever to see how things are doing under there?

 

i keep telling people that they get what they pay for.

 

i do open the hood to check things out, but the filter isn't in plain sight.



the CAI is similar to the Injen product, you can see how the tube goes down behind the radiator and the filter sits right against the black plastic "tray". so you can't really see it per say when you are checking fluid levels and such.

the thing is, that rusty filter was only on the car for about 7 weeks! i guess all the snow, salt and rain up here in northern NY gave it hell.

jim

 

so if the intake rusted...it got wet...which means water got in the engine

 

Hey thats the same CAI I was going to get...

 

Poke your head down there and look at the filter or turn a flat head five times and take the long tubing and the filter out.

 

true, and normally i would've. i just didn't think after such a short amount of time there would be an issue. although, you're right, i probably should have looked from time to time given the "cheapness" of the filter itself. ah well.....live and learn. hopefully this stainless one won't have any issues.

you could be right, however it wouldn't be enough to cause any problems, i would have to actually submerge the entire filter for it suck up enough h20 to hydrolock. heck, the intake on my old Neon had the filter a mere 2-3" from the ground, never had an issue with it.

just for clarification, when you say "intake" are you talking about the manifold or the CAI tubes? if it clears anything up, the rust was actually rust "dust" from the filter element itself.

jim

 

moisture and salt could make it rust too. its more exposed to salt down there, and the whole engine bay experiences light moisture from time to time. just because a crappy filter rusts doesnt mean it was getting any more water/moisture than anything else in the engine bay.

 

wow, i never seen a filter like that, I don't even see the purpose of having one, instead of sticking to the stock airbox, lol