Running w/o air filter?

[gloryaccordy]

Would this be bad? I was just wondering because I'm not sure if cars w/ITB's have them, unless they're not visible (i.e. right behind the horns). It's prob. a stupid question, but I just wanted to know...my ghetto intake came apart and I was driving w/o one in a while, and it felt a little sluggish...I'm just hoping my internals aren't all grimed up. Thoughts?

[chessboxer]

id say run with the filter on no matter what, even if you have to duct tape that shit on there. If you suck up a leaf, a rock, a bit or water or anything, youre gonne be fucked as engine internals usually dont do too well with solid objects.

[Maple50175]

Yeah you deff need something there to keep things out. i mean if u want to illiminate the filter just go buy some screen mesh and use that. That would keep out the large things but it wont on the dirt part

[accordztech]

if a grain of sand got in there...or even a leaf...it will for sure F up ur system.

and if u leave it open then ur internals will gunk up more.

[Fearit22]

You really wont even notice too much of a gain from that. If you are out and something happened to your intake filter and you are left without anything to put on it the best substitute is a sock hehe ... it'll work to get you home at least.

[bradvb]

The air filter is designed in a way to filter out small water molicules of the air which are there but you can't see (to some extent). Running without an air filter for prolonged ammounts of time makes your engine at risk of hydraulic lock up, this means that a forign liquid has entered the combustion chamber and siezed all moving parts. The only way to fix this is a complete engine rebuild including cylender honing and re-boaring, or a new engine.
My advice, if your gonna do some racing, stretch some pantyhose over the throttle body, but get that filter back on when your not racing!

[HondaFan81]

The worse of your problems will not be water but dirt particles in the air. Have you ever looked at a used air filter? Just imagine that finding it's way into your cylinders. Ever take sandpaper to metal? Not until recently did I realize how critical it is to keep that crap out of your engine. I found this out in visiting the machine shop near my area, I was shown first-hand some V8 blocks with cylinder walls scored up. The machinist told me one of the main reasons for this is cuz crap gets into your cylinders, through air, oil, etc. It doesn't take much to have more than 0.040" overbore of damage.

[cb7-R]

yeah dude a filter is a must. All the little things that you cant see will enter into your engine and cause some serious cylnder scoring. As for itb's well they are actually created for race cars and not street driven cars. And race car engines usually only last about 6 months to a year, so engine life is not too important.