2 years driving with no air filter...

[Minou]

Yesterday while watching my stepson doing maintenance on his old '91-'92 Plymouth Sundance, when I noticed that there was no airbox nor any air filtration in his car, he said "Yeah, been like that for 2 years. I scrounged the PowerFlow or something to my other car"...

My, My and we split hair on this board over single digit Si and metals in UOA's.

He also changed his oil. Poured the cheapeast no name Canadian Tire dino with, you guessed it, a Fram PH16 filter!

The oil that came out actually didn't look too bad but I wonder what kind of Si, Na and metals a car driving with no air filter would throw?

Swallowing dust, sand, leaves, mosquitos whole and with the insane quantities of road salt used over here, must be pretty nasty.

 

[simple_gifts]

Great way to decarbon the piston tops. 8)

 

[expat]

I'd say that he has severely devalued that car.

I mean, dose it really matter when we are talking about a 91 Sundance??

 

[eljefino]

My dad had the bright idea of going to a junkyard for a $700 car for my sister to drive one summer. He was going to donate it to "kidney cars" come labor day, back when you could write off blue book value.

There was this 1985ish dodge 600, basically the same motor, with legions of rotted puking vacuum and PCV hoses. We took a pass. It did run quite nicely. Possibly the blowby (there was oil everywhere) kept any hoses from actually INGESTING dirt and grime etc.

FWIW, my motorcycle came with open-to-unfiltered-air carb vents (a PO hack) and 8000 miles. Fixed that right quick and it's been fine since.

FWIW as well, snowblowers have no air filters as standard equipment.

 

[Papa Bear]

If you are running the snow-blower you won't be ingesting mosquitoes...
and wet snow keeps the dust down too...

 

[Herz]

Car will be fine atleast he is doing "some" maint.

 

[Chris142]

I have a customer with a beater late 60's chevy pickup. Thing hasn't had an airfilter for as long as I can remember. Plenty of dirt on top of the leaky quadrajet carb.

He wont let us or anybody put a filter on it.

 

[StevieC]

My Austin Mini had a piece of foam similar to that of a lawnmower carb filter and the SI was in the single digits when I did a UOA.

?!?

 

[GMBoy]

Originally Posted By: StevieC
My Austin Mini had a piece of foam similar to that of a lawnmower carb filter and the SI was in the single digits when I did a UOA.

?!?

And some on here claim a K&N will ruin an engine..

 

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
Great way to decarbon the piston tops. 8)



Absolutely. I would offer him some Aluminumoxide media blast to really set things off nice. It makes stuff look pretty in the blasting cabinet. Should provide a nice brushed finish.

 

[SecondMonkey]

My boat has never had an air filter in 30+ years of hard running....

 

[grampi]

It is a Sundance. Those cars are worthless POJ throw-away cars anyway. Though if it were mine, I would use an air filter, but the cheapest I could find along with the cheapest oil and oil filter. Those cars aren't worth spending any money on.

 

[01rangerxl]

In high school a friend of mine got a 1990ish Camry for $100 or something like that. There was no air filter. The car ran good, it would just stall a lot unless you kept giving it a little gas. It never did get an air filter in the time my friend had it. He intended to tear the car up.

 

[PT1]

Originally Posted By: SecondMonkey
My boat has never had an air filter in 30+ years of hard running....

None of my boats everhad air filters just SS screen flame arrestors. But, not much dust on Lake Erie.

 

[JTK]

A newer vehicle with a MAF sensor wouldn't fare so well once debris starts to collect on/around the delicate sensor. An old carb'd or throttle body fuel injected beast would probably run for ever on unfiltered air provided the conditions are right.

Joel

 

[SecondMonkey]

Originally Posted By: PT1
Originally Posted By: SecondMonkey
My boat has never had an air filter in 30+ years of hard running....

None of my boats everhad air filters just SS screen flame arrestors. But, not much dust on Lake Erie.


Often lots of bugs in marine environments though. Surely my engine has ingested at least as many mosquitoes as I have cruising along at 60 without a windshield.

 

[onion]

Depends on your application and where & how you use the engine as to whether or not an air filter really matters. I've seen cars and boats ran for years with no air filter. I've also overhauled DOZENS of diesel engines that had been "dusted" due to a bad air filter or nothing more than a hole in the air cleaner pipe. On-highway engines can get away with it for a while, but will eventually incur damage. But an off-highway engine in an agricultural, construction, or oilfield application will die a quick and expen$ive death without proper air filtration.

When I get an engine in the shop with high blowby, hard starting, smoking when cold, oil consumption, etc., then the air cleaner and air cleaner pipe are among the first things I check. Dirt in the air pipe AFTER the air cleaner is often the smoking gun. And when an diesel engine is thoroughly dusted, the compressor wheel on the turbo will look like it's been sand-blasted- lots of times the turbo will 'sing' due to the rough finish and/or balance issues.

Matter of fact, I have a Freightliner with a Mercedes 4000 engine in this shop right now where I suspect that it's been 'dusted'. The guy has been complaining about oil consumption for some time. I ran a compression test- #6 is at 55% and #5 is at 80%. Thr rest are ok. I see a little dirt in the air cleaner pipe, but not enough to definitively say that it's THE problem. I'll pull the #5 and #6 heads tomorrow. The cylinder walls will tell all.

 

[rpn453]

Originally Posted By: onion
Depends on your application and where & how you use the engine as to whether or not an air filter really matters. I've seen cars and boats ran for years with no air filter. I've also overhauled DOZENS of diesel engines that had been "dusted" due to a bad air filter or nothing more than a hole in the air cleaner pipe. On-highway engines can get away with it for a while, but will eventually incur damage. But an off-highway engine in an agricultural, construction, or oilfield application will die a quick and expen$ive death without proper air filtration.


When my buddy worked for the oilfield service company Sanjel, where gravel and dirt roads are used on a daily basis, they would do a UOA on every oil change to check for silicon. I don't remember if they had experienced an intake problem or had simply received a bad batch of air filters, but the problem took out a number of large diesel engines and they didn't want it to happen again.

 

[bigmike]

Originally Posted By: GMBoy
Originally Posted By: StevieC
My Austin Mini had a piece of foam similar to that of a lawnmower carb filter and the SI was in the single digits when I did a UOA.

?!?

And some on here claim a K&N will ruin an engine..

+1

 

[Dualie]

Diesel engines especially turbo diesel engines are much more susceptible to dusting. We used to have an Chrysler flathead in a Clark forklift that was ran outside in a VERY dusty yard. ran for 3 years like that.

finally the oil consumption go to great and it was just given to an employee for use around his house. Its still running. 10+ years later.