I recently removed the rubber shield to the left (passenger side) of the radiator to get some more cold air to my bhaf, I saw a member on here had done this, thats where I got the idea, so now I am thinking it was a bad idea, cause my bhaf has no pre-filter, and I am worried about rain getting on the filter when it is raining out, should I be concerned about this???? It rained tonight pretty hard while I was driving it, but the filter did not appear to be wet??? If the filter were to get wet, what kind of engine damage could result????

 

I am thinking you saw my pic and also noticed my outerwears cover...... as for a wet bhaf? I think the paper pretty much disintigrates, leaving you with an open filtrations system, on par with a K&N. Call up outerwears, they know what a bhaf is and what to send you quick helpfull and fast. I will let others remark about removing the air deflector, just seemed like a no brainer to me.

 

I did that with my last powerstroke and I ended up with a ton of bugs in the filter... 3 months and it was so bad it took an hour to clean the filter out... Piece of window screen fixed it and I didn't have any problem with water though.
OG

 

Guys, I assure you that the paper won't disintegrate...its multilayer and made of cellulose....you don't see too many cellulose trees falling in the forest due to getting wet. If you have a TST box you will see that under the hood is pretty warm on even the coldest of days (BT is the temp under the hood). The filter will dry out pretty quick especially if you stop and the heat mass of the engine radiates the filter with heat. Not all of the BHAF is exposed to the wet air coming in. My stock air filter will get wet if I follow behind a truck in the rain and it will pull down the air flow a bit but you'll only notice it towing heavy on hills. Air box or filter covered in snow is another matter. As for K&N as you will be told by those that have them....Unless you've owned one and tested your oil, you are telling stories from the distant past. Alot of filter owners on here get excellent oil tests with K&N and the others. If you don't test your oil you don't have a clue how the air filtration system you have is working...you can't believe everything you hear especially on the internet!!ks

 

Yall worry to much about your BHAF's. I ran one for 3 years and submerged it with more water and mud than you could shake a stick at and it still worked great. One of my buddies takes his 03 mudding every weekend and he has an open element BHAF with about a year of abuse on it and it's holding up fine and it's completely brown. These filters are tougher than people make them out to be.

 

Do yall think I would see some benifits from removing my rubber piece? In other words would all that is being said about the BHAF stand true for my afe stage 2

 

not sure how many more people are gonna see this thread and reply. I figured out a way to test this easy enough, I have one of those remote weather stations, sender receivers for the house. I figure if I put the sending unit inside my bhaf and drive at full op temp and check the temp inside the bhaf with and without the rubber flap. Only problem being I tossed the rubber flap I think when I was cleaning the truck tool box...... so if I can rig something similar I will and report back results. ( no the remote sender wont get sukt into the turbo) I will try to record outside temp via overhead as well for both runs.

 

ok, back, results are here, I installed the remote sensing thermometer inside my bhaf and went for a drive, first with the intake area in front blocked, as good as it comes from the factory. Got up to full op temp as I got to the highway. All heat controlls left alone, defroster not on. over a 15 mile stretch at 70 mph here is what I saw:

outside indicated on overhaed : 39 Deg F
remotely sensed temp in bhaf. : 54 Deg F

Return trip results, air dam off
outside indicated on overhead : 39 Deg F
remotely sensed temp in bhaf. : 43 Deg F


An 11 deg drop for inside the bhaf at highway speed, I did not check air dam in place at around town speeds but with it off I did notice that the temp climbed right back to 54 Deg F at anything below 45 mph, at idle with full temp motor the temp jumped to 61 Deg F So for comments what do you think? the next step would be to check the results at the outlet from the intercooler to see if that 11 degrees is overcome or not. Results in the summer would be needed to really weigh this out.

 

not even one comment? hmph thats the last time I drive around with my remote temp sensing unit inside my bhaf I can tell ya that....

 

I wouldn't worry about cool air in the winter months (I plugged the hole up in my scotty as a matter of fact). Now in the summer months, it might be more prevalent.

 

Mikmaze, THANK YOU for riding around with your remote temperature sensing unit in your BHAF, and thank you for contributing data to the global knowledge about the CTD.

 

I 2nd the thanks. The question I got now is basically what you said about the intercooler, does 11deg matter?

 

now we're getting somewhere..... the remote sensor is too big for me o comfortably put inside the outlet from the intercooler so someone with a smaller sendin unit is gonna have to try this and report back.

 

NOT!!!!!!! And I have the oil analyses to back it up!!! How this "hearsay" gets perpetuated is unbelievable!!