i'd like to build a better flowing and nicer looking air filter assembly. anyone done this? or are there decent priced kits out in the great wasteland?

best to all


robin

- as for better looking, yes, there is a lot of bling out there you can spend money on ...

- as for better flowing, why? i mean, why would one want to suck in more dirt into the internals of their engine?
in terms of best filtering, the stock early oil-bath filter beats them all. best unit you can run on a 1.7L. hands down. everything else will only benefit the wallet of the guy you're going to buy it from ...


Andy

I hated when after cornering hard I would drip oil onto my headers. I wanted mine to look stock so I gutted the oil bath part, welded it up and put in a paper element.
I posted pictures of it here last year.

huh? how would oil get from your air-filter to your headers anyways? that sounds pretty impossible ...

i ran the stock oilbath filter for years, including a few hard driven AX, never had a single drop coming out of it.
now, if you ask me about that one time i stepped on it while it was on the garage floor, that's a whole different story ...

bottomline, the oilbath filter works far better than any paper element and way better than any of the "performance" filters.
all they do is let more dust into the engine. which can't be good in the long run ...

Andy

ok, again, please explain to me how it could be beneficial to suck in more dust and dirt?

on a race engine that get's rebuild every other HOUR, yeah, i might see the benefit of a little bit less restriction on the air-intake.
but for a street or even light AX/TT car, i don't believe i would risk sudden engine death for a few (perceived) HP ...

most of the time, people "think" their car has more HP after a mod like that because the less restrictive filter increases the intake noise.
the car *sounds* faster ...

that's about all you get out of them. of course, they *do* look bling ...
Andy

I'm with Andy. Auto-x'd my 1.7 for many years, rgional. Parade. etc. NEVER ONCE had a a problem with oil for the air cleaner. Look inside folks - the oil in the cleaner is what? a few tablespoons?

If you want bling - go for it, but don't fault the engineering of the original oil bath. Does exactly what it's supposed to to do.

if you had oil spilling onto hot parts it's because you did something wrong! Just jeep the "hair" clean & it will work forever!

You know, I'm going to try using a HEPA vacuum filter that fits my RIGID shop vac. I tell you, my shop sits right next to a guy with 4 horses, and he loves to run them around stirring up all kinds of the finest damned dust you never wanted to know, and it sneaks its way into my building.

This stuff makes wind blown sand or drywall dust look like boulders, no kidding, it's that bad. Yet I can take my shop vac to the floor and use it till it loses suction and (building up 3/16" of this crap in the process) then take the filter out and the insides of the filter look like new! There is not a trace of any particle of dust in the exhaust port. Nothing whatsoever. I take the filter to the dumpster, beat it against the sides stirring up a toxic cloud, and it's good to go for another try... Even after doing this it looks significantly better than any air cleaner I've seen after 5000 miles.

I'll have to do some tests to see how they flow, but I have a feeling it's going to be fine. Heck, even if I have to put a few in parallel to get it to flow, I'll probably do that!

I think if you do some research you could find a suitable replacement for the air filter, planning on doing that myself this winter.

oil bath probably is the best, but the ghia used to have one and it was always a mess. Not that I took very good care of it or anything....

Yay, AA!

If you HAD to do this to your 1.7, which is not gonna do much good anyway, you could build one of those kits yourself. It has been done and is not hard (or worth it IMHO). Just hit up some Home Depot and a FLAPS.

We've had many a discussion on this.

Most recently I have been trying to track down a replacement filter number for the NLA 1.7 air filter. Someone posted the Bosch part number but I am having trouble trying to cross reference.

I actually sent an email to Fram giving the dimensions of the filter asking if they can advise a filter number that would be close. Have not heard anything yet.

As for the intake kit... my .02.

It has been proven that the only benefit in doing an intake would be to get cooler air into the engine. On a 1.7 this is easy to do using the stock filter housing. I am actually mocking something up right now. I will post details when I get it done.

Do a search on this subject and you will get quite a few threads including some people that already did it themselves.

I've had a prob w/oil seeping out of the oil bath too.

How much oil is *supposed* to be in the oil bath??? A few teaspoons? Just enough to coat the bottom?

There's a line painted on the lip around the bottom. THAT'S the fill mark. The Cap'n

My car started to smoke just after I finished my total resoration. I found oil on the heat exchangers. I traced it back up to the engine tin and from there up to the air clearer intake had oil on it too.
I checked the oil level and it was at the top of the red line in the filter.
It happened to me 2 more times in the next 2 years so I took a spare 1.7 filter, hogged it out and put in a paper filter.
No problems since.
Here my thread on it.
Paper Air Filter Conversion