- Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:32 am
#51386
teal_dx wrote:I heard them on an S2000 before... sounded more like an f1 car than a Honda.
Something I always wondered... everybody with ITB's runs with no air filter. How much would this hurt engine life?
You're damn right. Particles as small as a few hundredths of a micron will get into your combustion chamber and get between the pistons and the cylinder walls, and consequently in your oil. This scratches the cylinder walls lowering compression and causing excessive blowby. As you can imagine these small particles are always present in the air. Not to mention moisture.
If you don't believe me, look at the filtering specs for air filters and oil filters. Fractions of a micron.
Now just imagine the dust in the air that you can actually see.
On a race motor of course this doesn't matter because racing motors have a short expected lifespan (and also don't run for long periods of time). But on your daily driver you'd be a fool to run open filter.
The solution is simple in concept but difficult in implementation. Take the 20 valve 4AGE as an example (a JDM Toyota Corolla engine, 4 cylinder, 1.6 liter, 5 valve per cylinder, variable valve timing, and factory individual throttle bodies). You simply enclose the throttle bodies in a plenum attached to a normal intake tube and filter.
You also use a plenum when turbocharging an engine that has ITB's.
