996Outpost.com

I was doing some maintenance work on Acura yesterday. Did the oil, cabin air filter, and engine air filter.

My engine air filter is a cone air filter mounted on the home made CAI pipe that goes from the intake boot to the front of the bumper. Usually I replaced the filter by climbing under the car and undoing the cone and sticking the new one on. This time around I disconnected the pipe at the intake boot and pulled it out together with the filter from under the car. Upon looking inside the pipe I noticed a rather unnerving amount of fine dust. My first thought was.... I guess my cone filters aren't filtering shit.

Upon further inspection I saw the real culprit. Maybe a half of an inch up from where filter sits, there was a hole in the pipe. Hole was ground through by the frame of the car where pipe was resting on the frame. So tiny hole was letting some micro dust in.

I remedied thr situation and I haven't noticed any adverse driving effects or oil burning from the car. So fingers crossed.

Did you check the throttle body or MAF sensor? Might be worthwhile to check/clean.

I didn't as I saw zero adverse effects on the car's driving through all of this. I drove to Riverside and back in late March, and I got around 410 miles per tank with no economy driving and I didn't see any idling or running issues. I am just going to let it be.

When you say dust are you talking paper dust from the cone filter or mineral dust from the desert? It probably wouldn't hurt you to do an extra oil change to help get some of the grit out of the system if it's the latter.

Granted, this is an Acura so you'll probably have to pour a lot of sand in the oil to actually hurt the damn thing.

It was the desert dust. Chassis section ground the hole through the intake pipe, the same chassis section was resting in the hole it ground and taking up most of the empty space. I have no clue how long this went on. Last time I changed the air filter was over 2.5 years ago.

You're probably fine. If anything, you honed the cylinders. Probably runs better now with the increased displacement.

With regular oil and filter changes, my guess is that you’ll be fine. Honda products are pretty durable. Some years ago I was selling a 2006 Pilot and had a hard time determining value because it only had 60k miles on it. Every other one I found for sale had at least 120, with several in the 200 - 250 range.

If it starts smoking, take it to the MB dealer in Albuquerque. Ask for the guy in the 911, and get video

I would not bet much money that my M96 engine will outlast Kalash's Acura engine even though it might have eaten some dirt.