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Old 02-13-2010, 08:34 AM
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1analguy
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I read on one of the other forums that the Mopar filters came in both flavors (oiled and/or dry). You'll have to rub it with your fingers or something to see if it's oiled. If it's dry, you can forget about it causing any grief for your throttle body or any sensors in the intake.

I only raised the issue of oiled filters because I had a bad experience with a K&N drop-in that I bought for another car (turbo 4-cylinder) I had. I bought it new, took it out of the package and installed it in place of the stock paper filter. It ran OK at first (no better or worse than the stock setup) but after a couple of weeks, the car started acting up. It was way down on power while at the same time the boost gage was showing the engine was getting much more boost than it ever had in the past. Investigation revealed two problems, both caused by the K&N filter. The first problem was that the oil in the filter had started to "gel" and was actually beginning to clog the filter. This caused a sufficient reduction in intake air flow to cause the boost gage to register "high" because it was comparing the pressure difference between the pressure just ahead of the throttle body (now artificially-reduced) to the pressure in the intake manifold (also now reduced, though not as much because of the turbo). Obviously, the over-all reduced air flow was the reason for the power loss, but a second problem showed up as well. During the investigation I disassembled the whole intake tract, back through the throttle body, and discovered that oil had been "leaching" out of the filter and been carried down stream, leaving a fine coating on everything. Unfortunately, this included the throttle body and the hot wire in the MAF sensor. I immediately replaced the K&N with a clean stock filter which helped a great deal, but the car wasn't completely normal again until I took it back apart and cleaned the oil off of everything. Ever since, I've been a big user/proponent of clean paper air filters and have never had another problem of any kind.