AEM is dryflow, no oil needed. They do get dirty and clogged, and you can clean them though. AEM sells high dollar cleaning stuff, but really just some woolite in a bucket with some water will be fine. If you see that link and the insane abuse and bleach it took and still performed quite well, some woolite and litke agitation cleans it just fine. But you don't have ot wiat until 25k like with OEM, or if you drive in particularly dusty/polleny area, you can clean it every 5k if you want. Though doing that with a OEM would end up quite costly. It isn't like at 25k it goes from great to suck, it slowly degrades over time, it just isn't relaly needed/recommended untill 15k, like when it gets really bad. I like to clean my air filter every time I change my oil, simple quick and don't have to worry about it really.

 

SOME of us are closer to 200,000 than 100,000 miles on our cars and intend to keep driving them until we can't. A buy-it-once K&N and clean/oiling it every once in a while eventually does pay off in such a case. Just saying.

 

For the record, my '01 Tib picked up 11.7 whp with just an AEM intake. The gains are from the filter and the piping. The car was otherwise 100% bone stock.

 

^^^^ Where was the filter situated? In the engine bay or in the fender area? Any pics? Just wondering?

 

behind the left driving light.

 

^^^ That may have also been due to the MAF readings being skewed by the piping change as well.



Since a tib runs rich as a pig out of the box, if you can get the sensor reading a bit lower air flow, you run a bit leaner, and pick up some HP along the way.



I'm sticking with the factory airbox right now, might go to a large-ass pleated paper truck filter + airbox after the head swap (damn lifter tick sounds like a VW diesel...).

 

The MAF is in it's own housing, so the calibration didn't change. Most of the gains are from eliminating the restrictive factory intake with it's resonators. This is why a cone filter stuck on the factory intake doesn't gain much power.

 

I beg to differ, the maf transfer function is always affected by the pipeing before and after it. You can hold "blah cfm" on a maf sensor using a flow bench and get X volts, then change just the piping, hold blah CFM again, and get Y volts. Proven fact.



It's hard to explain why, since it has to do with the laminar vs turbulent flow, and a whole bunch of fluid dynamics crap.



Certainly some of it was decreased restriction, don't get me wrong.

 

yeah i'm just talking about the accent not the tib. also i'm betting it is a v6, so you need more air and the stock box was to small.



the o8 accent has a map sensor... no maf sensor.

 

All '01 Tibs are 2.0L Beta1's. Went from 109whp to 121whp.