WARNING ABOUT RAM AIR/COLD AIR!

Last summer, I bought a cheap air filter off of ebay and replaced it with my stock air filter hoping it would give me more power, which it did a little, however last November I got caught in a rain storm and kind of ran into a puddle, a big one, a real deep one about a foot deep, and somehow the intake sucked up some water and it got into my engine and completely locked up the pistons and got water stuck in the crankshaft and virtually everywhere else liquids are found in an engine, one week and $1000 later, my mechanic showed me a bucket with a little over 2 GALLONS of black, dirty, oily water in them, the guy said this was the worst water related engine problem he's ever seen and immediately pointed to the filter as the cause, the engine sucked up the water like a straw.

I quickly put the stock filter back on and never got the problem again, however what I just typed above was half of my warning, the other half of my warning is what he told me he found after the water was taken out, it was black soot, the soot was everywhere and it was brought in through the filter, because one it was a cheap filter and two there pretty much is very little actual filtration from microscopic particles.

My warning is don't get any filter until you know for a fact it can filter out just as much as your stock one can, if you have one of those filters now, get your engine checked, QUICK.

I'm not making any of this up, this is advice and a warning from one aveo owner to another.

Well that's why you dont get cheap filters... yeah it sucks to get hyrdo locked but you usually dont have to worry about that with a WAI (warm air intake). I do know of some people that have done the same thing as you

:lol: dont have to worry with my CAI intake either, ive been thru puddle as deep as 1 ft or more

so in this instance do you guys believe the AEM by-pass valve would prevent this from happening?

btw g0ast-good posting ;)

i live in so cal, it never rains! but thanks for the info, looks like ill have to buy one from aem to replace that cheap **** filter.

I once drove through a huge puddle with a 97 Chrysler Concorde V6 3.5L with a stock air filter. Seized the engine!

It’s more a lesson to drive threw huge puddles slow or avoid them all together rather then not change air filters. Although a cheap filter still is not a good filter.

is a 29.99 APC filter a "cheap" filter?

i compared to the others that were on shelf but it looked like it would work the best, its not one of those gay "steel mesh" filters

#1
dont use cheap ebay filters....k&n ftw

#2
cai/sri + fording rivers = youre a retard.

You actually paid $30 for an APC filter? Ouch... You can get an AEM dryflow for that if you look around. I ditched my K&Ns for the dryflow. They flow a bit less, but filter better and don't need oiling.

the receipt said 30 but i bought some other stuff too. i think i saw AEM but im just gonna upgrade to CAI next time i think ill just pay the 200 lump sum and go ftw with AEM

what are the odds of this happening...i'm thinking of purchasing a ram air but i dont want to lock up my engine

Short ram intake would have the same odds as the stock air box.

Cold air more so. Really, though, any time you're in enough water for the filter to become submerged you're already beyond where GM would cover any items anyways. You should never go through water deeper than the wheel hub.

The fender well should shield the filter from any thrown water.

yup

I avoid puddles, I should get a better filter though because I did get the cheapest spectre filter.

spectre is a junk filter in my experience

ive driven thru foot deep puddles with my CAI and it was fine

has anyone bought the short ram air off of ebay....if what do you think

I should have taken a picture of this 'puddle' I saw today in the parking lot where I work...

Looked like a seemingly harmless 5'x6' puddle in the parking lot until this lady drove INTO it!!! Turns out it was a foot deep and thrashed her suspension...if any of us hit it, our goose would be cooked!!!

the AEM bypass works i bought one as soon as i bought my cai but i tested it with a piece of pvc pipe a bucket of water and a shop vaccum and it snapped open instantly just like it should have