Well, I wanted to get this done before the snow and crap came in, but the 34" of snow we've had so far in December had other ideas. Anyway, I had some time off for the holidays and the weather was nice, so I finally got this installed and did a little write up for you guys.
As a lot of you know, when you install a CAI, the filter is pretty much right behind the vents in the wheel well area. If you ever noticed under your hood, all the water and road grime/salt that comes through there splashes all over the CAI and up into the engine bay. I preferred to just keep my Injen CAI on all year up here in the northeast, so I figured a splash shield was cheap insurance against soaking the filter, and having to clean it much more often than a normal air filter.
I went to my local Lowe's looking for the right material, and found the perfect piece. It's a aluminum ducting tube that comes unrolled, and being aluminum and thin/flexible, it made it perfect for this project. It was thin enough to cut with household scissors, and stiff enough to hold it's curved shape. I wanted to have the shield mounted behind the wheel well vents in a curved manner so it would allow air in still, but any incoming debris/water would just hit the shield, drop down, and drain out the bottom. The piece was like ~$2. I also had some small black sheet metal screws around that fit the bill. Here is the piece of aluminum I used for the shield...
The first step was to jack the front up in the air via a floor jack and the front factory jack point, and remove the front driver's side wheel. Once you do that, you should see this...
You can see in that pic how close the filter is to the vent openings in front of the wheel.
The next step is to remove 4 philips screws under the front of the car, and the three in the wheel well itself...
Here are the lower screws...
Here are the upper fasteners. They are basically push in fasteners with screws in the middle. Once you remove the screws they should pull right out.
You have two to the left of the vents...
...and one more above the vent.
Once you get all those out, you should be able to peel back the vent part easily. Take the aluminum shield piece, cut it in half across the curve so you have two equal pieces. The 2nd piece is extra so if you mess up along the way you have a second shield piece. This part is pretty basic, but there is no one way to get it mounted behind the vent shield, so don't worry about doing it wrong or right. You basically just want the shield behind the vents in the wheel well, covering them, but curved so air can get in still. On the piece I got the underside was a gold color, so you can kind of see how I allowed it to curve over the vent openings. I just used four small, ~.5" sheet metal screws in each corner.
Here is the end result...
That's it...you're done! Just put all the fasteners back in, the wheel back on, and drop the car down. Now, you won't have to worry when driving around in a pouring rain, or if you live where it gets cold, water filled with road salt. Just to give you an idea of how much crap the filter gets, I put in my Injen maybe 3 or 4 months ago, and this is how my filter looked on the vent side...
..and this was how it looked on the back side...
Hope this helps anyone wanting to do this. It's a really easy, cheap project that will keep that filter nice and clean for much longer, and pretty much make filter soaking a non-issue while still allowing plenty of air into the fender well.
If you are putting on a CAI anyway, this is also a good extra step to do when installing it. Once it's in there, you can just forget about and drive...
:cheers:
As a lot of you know, when you install a CAI, the filter is pretty much right behind the vents in the wheel well area. If you ever noticed under your hood, all the water and road grime/salt that comes through there splashes all over the CAI and up into the engine bay. I preferred to just keep my Injen CAI on all year up here in the northeast, so I figured a splash shield was cheap insurance against soaking the filter, and having to clean it much more often than a normal air filter.
I went to my local Lowe's looking for the right material, and found the perfect piece. It's a aluminum ducting tube that comes unrolled, and being aluminum and thin/flexible, it made it perfect for this project. It was thin enough to cut with household scissors, and stiff enough to hold it's curved shape. I wanted to have the shield mounted behind the wheel well vents in a curved manner so it would allow air in still, but any incoming debris/water would just hit the shield, drop down, and drain out the bottom. The piece was like ~$2. I also had some small black sheet metal screws around that fit the bill. Here is the piece of aluminum I used for the shield...
The first step was to jack the front up in the air via a floor jack and the front factory jack point, and remove the front driver's side wheel. Once you do that, you should see this...
You can see in that pic how close the filter is to the vent openings in front of the wheel.
The next step is to remove 4 philips screws under the front of the car, and the three in the wheel well itself...
Here are the lower screws...
Here are the upper fasteners. They are basically push in fasteners with screws in the middle. Once you remove the screws they should pull right out.
You have two to the left of the vents...
...and one more above the vent.
Once you get all those out, you should be able to peel back the vent part easily. Take the aluminum shield piece, cut it in half across the curve so you have two equal pieces. The 2nd piece is extra so if you mess up along the way you have a second shield piece. This part is pretty basic, but there is no one way to get it mounted behind the vent shield, so don't worry about doing it wrong or right. You basically just want the shield behind the vents in the wheel well, covering them, but curved so air can get in still. On the piece I got the underside was a gold color, so you can kind of see how I allowed it to curve over the vent openings. I just used four small, ~.5" sheet metal screws in each corner.
Here is the end result...
That's it...you're done! Just put all the fasteners back in, the wheel back on, and drop the car down. Now, you won't have to worry when driving around in a pouring rain, or if you live where it gets cold, water filled with road salt. Just to give you an idea of how much crap the filter gets, I put in my Injen maybe 3 or 4 months ago, and this is how my filter looked on the vent side...
..and this was how it looked on the back side...
Hope this helps anyone wanting to do this. It's a really easy, cheap project that will keep that filter nice and clean for much longer, and pretty much make filter soaking a non-issue while still allowing plenty of air into the fender well.
If you are putting on a CAI anyway, this is also a good extra step to do when installing it. Once it's in there, you can just forget about and drive...
:cheers: