I was talking with a service advisor at the local lexus dealership about aftermarket intake systems. He commented that the aftermarket intakes may cause debris to accumulate on the intake sensor. Also he said that a cheaper and easier way to improve the intake is to just take out the filter and put a piece of fine fabric (i.e. panty hose) on the intake to catch debris.

 

this is the same guy that wanted to rotate your tires, right?

 

That guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Panty hose wouldn't catch nearly as much "debris" as ANY aftermarket intake system that was properly installed and maintained.

 

I wouldn't trust that guy near any car...

 

I have seen that done many years ago. Stretched over a carb. but only for the 1/4 mile race and then put the original filter back on.

Aloha

 

Panty hose as an intake filter, that's an old school track mod.

 

I've actually seen it done only for temporary purposes...

 

It only keeps out the biggest chunks. It's short a lot of surface area. I'd call it marginally better than no filter at all, and I have considerable experience running no filters (which is what I would do if I felt I needed to get a quick TINY power gain.)

 

I do a lot of 4wheeling in very dusty environments. I go through filters pretty quick and I've found that the stock dry ones work the best as far as filtering and the oiled ones like K&N tend to just deposit oil and dust down the intake tract. On my 4Runner, at least, I found that the intake plumbing is more restrictive than the actual filter. I installed a marine deck plate into the air box to open it up while on the street. It makes a noticable difference but the 4Runner is still a major slug.

The MAF (Mass Air Flow) sensor can get pretty gummed up and will eventually trip the ECU but luckily they can be cleaned pretty easily.

 

Yeah, I actually did this to my 91 Pontiac Trans Am when I used to go out to the drag races on the weekends. To me it seemed to work really well with the mods I had on the car. What I really liked about it was the way it sucked in air, it was so loud some people actually thought I had a supercharger/blower under the hood...little did they know, that's not the reason my car was so fast - the 160hp wet-system of nitrous was