Thread: #^@& My intake...

Last night, I'm driving to work, it's below freezing and snowing pretty hard. All of a sudden, my car starts jerking. If I was accelerating or off throttle completely, things were fine. But if I sat with just enough pressure on the pedal to maintain my speed, it would jerk..

So after about 4 miles (closest place I could safely pull over on the mountain) I pull over. I pop the hood, and realize that my cone filter had fallen off and was just chilling out in my engine bay. Stuck it back on and took off, everything running fine again. For those of you who don't know already, I bought my car with a super ghetto intake, stock everything to the MAF, and then a cone filter just shoved into the MAF housing. I really need to replace this soon asap.

But main question, could I have caused any damage in the few miles I ran with it jerking? I was trying to accelerate, then off throttle completely over and over to avoid hitting the spot that it would jerk.. Don't think it could have really caused damage, but just reassuring myself. Everything seems fine now.

Also, when sticking the cone back into my maf housing, when I moved the stock piping around to get it in there, the car seemed like it was going to stall out, RPMs dropped quite a bit for a second, any ideas?

get a proper intake

00 01 02-03 NISSAN SENTRA SE/SER 2.0 COLD AIR INTAKE B - eBay (item 120339732026 end time Jan-13-11 20:18:06 PST)

RED Nissan Sentra 1.6L 2.0L Air Intake + Filter 1997 97 - eBay (item 300502482321 end time Jan-07-11 13:40:52 PST)

oops, forgot to ad. your car went into "limp" mode when your intake fell off. No biggie.

I know "get a proper intake" that is common sense and planned on. But at this exact moment it is how it is and I hadn't rushed anything since I had other concerns to address first and until last night I had never seen a problem with it set up this way.

Also, how would the ECU know that the filter fell off? Theres no sensor on the cone obviously.. Just from the added air flow I assume it was getting without having to be passed through a filter?

My guess is that with the filter off, turbulent air entering the intake was causing the MAF sensor to read erratically. You're right, the ECU has no clue about the filter, only the effect not having one has on the MAF sensor.

Dave

the problem is the MAF sensor my friend. that is either too close to the throttle body or was moved when you filter fell off. Also, the MAF could be reading incorrect amount of air when your filter fell off.

I went through the EXACT same thing sir. I got a proper intake system and my SR20DE ran fine(no harm done with the bucking) until i swapped it out for a VE

What Dave said.
Also, you didn't do any real damage as long as you didn't suck up anything crazy like leaves or dirt into the intake while the filter was off.
What you're calling the MAF is actually the stock air box I think. You can't put a cone filter INTO the MAF "housing".

Oh but you can. I'll go snap a pic of what I have going on..lol

Btw, it was like this when I bought it a few months ago.