Induction kits

...apart from the part where you're not right. (c:

Douglas

The message from "Nom" contains these words:

Yup, sorry, I thought we were!

I did. And I concluded K&N's oil-soaked cotton elements were pretty good - so I bought one :)

Nope - not a chance !

That's fine - it's upto you what you spend your money on. I quite like my K&N element, and it's likely I'll fit one to my next car too.

Some people are, and some people aren't :)

My pro-K&N stance is based on their oil-soaked cotton filters vs standard paper elements.

The cone-filter type of induction-kits, are very different. Whilst they can be good for some cars, they can also be bad for others.

Agreed.

I suppose it depends on the integrity of your local garage :)

He was talking to "Sales!", not me !

I for one, can't see anything wrong with "Sales!" reasoning - can you ?

You reckon I should take it out of my engine too? That's filled with the stuff. I've heard that oil corrodes metal something terrible, a bloke called "brain damage" told me about how oil damages metal, while criticising the spammer's address I use to post under, so he must be really on the ball...

On a race engine? Or are you still not convinced that airborne debris contributes to their early wear?

Well if the oil insulated the wire - and my experience suggests it has the reverse effect due to increased surface area - you'd get lower readings for airflow and start running lean. Any decent mechanic would compare the air flow readings with revs and realise the MAF was reading lower (or higher) than it should, if there was a problem with metering, and if there isn't why care?

Even so, on my car (and I'd imagine most others), cleaning the MAF takes about thirty seconds and should be done with some regularity (annually, say) because there are contaminants coming into the duct whatever filter you use, and the MAF does get dirty (and doesn't get hot enough to incinerate the gunk).

If the filter oil was coming off in significant quantity, this would mean the MAF got dirtier quicker, no error there, and it would be annoying if it was really often, has anyone found this to be the case?

A propos the "faulty MAF". It's normal for a garage to replace the MAF unit in toto, costing maybe fifty or a hundred notes. There are three components, the hot wires themselves, the housing, and the box of tricks that does the bridge rectifier / diode / signaling.

If the box of tricks goes wrong, that's a reason to have to replace the MAF. The housing won't often go wrong, it's basically a metal tube. The hot wires are just standard thermo resistors and replacements can be soldered on easily enough when they go wrong, which I don't think is all that often, but would usually be because they run hot and this accelerates aging. Oil on them should not change the heat they run at, and I would be surprised if it had a harmful effect on the metal.

Similarly, oil inside the duct really shouldn't have any sort of effect on the box of tricks on the outside of the housing. I believe this is more often the cause for a MAF failure, based on the three I've studied which have faulty controllers, nowt wrong with the housing, and wires that vary with temperature and retained their continuity (which I take to mean they are undamaged.)

A garage won't change the wires, though, for all sorts of reasons, you'd have to DIY that, and that's not to some people's taste. A lot of people would rather pay 60 quid for a "it's all fine now" from the garage and a new unit, when a spray or two of carb cleaner would return it to perfectly good condition.

I'll describe *one* situation that is worth bearing in mind. Rather than insulating the wire, I find oil causes the MAF to read high, i.e. tell the PCM that more air is going in than is actually going in.

Now, the oiled filter may deposit oil on the MAF wires, I would anticipate the effect would be the MAF would read high. The PCM would respond by adding more fuel via the injectors and the richer mixture, while doing you no favours for MPG, may well produce a power improvement, e.g. while the car is running in open loop fuelling. You could have a study that produced this result but it wouldn't be because the filter was doing you any good.

I've noted the smiley there!

I've only found one garage that's halfway decent, and since our office was= =20 moved 60 miles, I've not been able to go back there.

Pete.

--=20 NOTE! Email address is spamtrapped. Any email will be bounced to you Remove the news and underscore from my address to reply by mail

Astra 2L SRi. REmove K&N induction kit, go alot faster.

On a race engine it doesn't matter. Its life expectancy is until the end of the race then its rebuilt. When I used to rally a MK2 Essie years ago the engine was stripped and rebuilt after every event and that was at clubman level.

yeek. What bits do you replace when doing that?

cheers, clive

The message from Sales! contains these words:

I quite agree. My only interest in this (and it's fairly well worn out by now) is amazment at the way people will spend loads of money on something of dubious benefit. Even if it did give them the benefit claimed it'd only be at full throttle that it became important and in all honesty, how many people use full throttle that often?

Shells usually. Doesn't cost as much as you think. Saves on crank regrinds.

I got a full set of shells for a 1.6 Vauxhall engine, and they were only 30 quid. If you bought them in bulk, they'd be a lot cheaper I'd imagine.

Pete.

You are quite correct, a thousand apologies old boy.

Yeah, but tis still wrong. (c:

Douglas

In what way?

I've got various parts waiting to be used and nearly all of them are coated in oil to preserve them.

How can oil damage the metal wires in a MAF?

A set of shells, piston rings, liners and the rest of it isn't generally expensive per piece. (30 quid seems a fair bit, for a four pot, to me, for the shells).

The real cost is in removing the engine, taking the sump / head off, and putting it all back together after replacing the bearings. If you do this yourself, the headline cost is actually pretty low. Price up your own hourly labour at a reasonable level and it becomes expensive (maybe).

But of course, there's a fair chance you didn't tighten something up properly and the block is damaged by a rod or the like. With a rally / race engine that you routinely rebuild and when you have spare blocks / heads to play with it's all about investing time in your hobby or the fact that you have engineers you're paying (formula one and the like) and they may as well be working as watching.

Liners require a press, well - that depends on the engine, but bearings are a spanner / socket set / hands replacement. In that sense an engine rebuild is not a major issue. A garage that "rebuilds" your car engine and gives it a warranty is a *quite* different (and scary) pricing model. I'm not aware of many in between options.