A heads up for those of you with the AEM CAI

Hey y'all, new to the forum, new to Tacomas and this AEM brand, so forgive me if this is a well known issue. Something happened to my wife's truck and i thought I'd pass it on to you all.

I'm a car guy, but haven't worked on or owned a Tacoma (this one is a 1999 Prerunner and has the 3RZ I4). I bought this truck for my wife from the original owner, 185K, nice truck, hardly any mods, but one is the AEM cold air intake. We've had it since summer, and love it. Yesterday it barely made it home and being relatively ignorant about Toyotas, Tacomas and this engine, I had to start from nothing but my experience and my wits.

After some reading here on the forum last night, I at least had a direction to go in based on the symptoms the truck was having and first pulled the CAI/MAF to clean it up, if nothing else.




See the round, chrome dealy in the center of the filter? It's glued in, and had come loose over time, temperature and vibration and had sucked up into the MAF, killing it and shutting down the engine. The truck was running like the MAF had been unplugged. I glued it back in and all's well. This may be an older AEM model and I've noticed cracking on the two rubber collars and a completely disintegrated gasket from the MAF to the fitting at the filter end as well.

Anyway, if this ever happens and you have this setup, stick your finger in there or take a peek in the filter, that round chrome piece may have come loose.

Nice to be here

 

Welcome to TW and Congrats on the solid fix +1 Rep for Do-It-Yourself

 

Hey thanks As I continue to dig around I'm wondering if this filter is some cheapo Chinese made piece-o-junk. If I can find a good replacement and some kind of "cage"(?) I can keep this from happening again.

 

did your cold air intake come with a heat shield?

 

I'm not sure

No, pretty sure it didn't....

 

Then your still sucking in engine bay air, and it's warm

 

This will not do

 

That filter it not from aem....thats a spectra filter from autozone

 

I had a feeling... thanks for pointing that out, and I'll avoid that in the future. Just for the record, the truck came with this setup

 

So I need to measure the inside diameter of the old filter?

 

No problem i only knew that cause i used to run aem with a sprectra filter haha but im glad mine didnt do that. If I were you though I get a new CAI. that one looks like its jerry rigged in there like its not ment for that car...plus it has no heat shield it only sucking in hot air.