Hello everyone, I'm a long time fan and now proud owner of a 2004 Crossfire Limited Coupe. Manual tranny, less than 100K miles, great paint, nice interior, drives fantastic, very happy with the car so far.

However, while getting ready to do an oil change & other basic maintenance stuff, I started looking into the engine cover/air box assembly and noticed it wasn't sitting correctly in the throttle body. Likely done during the recent smog check, so not too worried it allowed too much unfiltered air into the engine, but the big issue I found was that both air filter boxes weren't completely secure due to a few broken screw mounts. In fact, one of the screw mounts broke off as I was just unscrewing the box!

I took them apart and noticed some light dust on top of the filters, which means that some dirt did get past the air filter assembly and directly into the engine. Both were K&N filters, they didn't seem to fit too well and one of them had a crack in the seal. Luckily I found a good condition replacement air box on EBay with all the screw mounts in tact, should be here in less than 2 weeks. I will in the meantime gerry rig this air box, drill some holes so I can use bolts to secure the air filter boxes, this way I can still drive the car for now. I will pick up some paper filters tomorrow since these K&N filters are a bit wonky in fit.

The oil has about 8,000 miles on it, but still looks rather clean, so I'm hoping that any debris that got into the engine wasn't too much. I will have a Blackstone Lab oil analysis done just in case to see how the engine is doing and how much particulates were in the engine. In finding this out, I just wanted to warn other owners to keep an eye on their air boxes. Make sure not only that it's secured correctly on the throttle body, but maybe a good idea to remove it and check the 8 screws/mounts holding the 2 air filter boxes in place. Looks like they can get fragile over the years, which can risk your whole engine if left like that for a while.

 

Good tip, thanks.
However, I have none of the above, engine cover or plastic tubing to throttle body, I have a gen 1 Needswings single CAI.

IMG 0122edited

Nikon camera - black krinkle valve covers

 

Well that's awesome, and a whole let less likely to have an issue down the road. I'm going to look that up, I honestly don't like the factory air box system, seems like an over engineered idea with too many variables for issues even though Mercedes has similar air boxes on so many different models.

 

CLICK

 

also 8000 miles on the oil???? most of us change it at 5000, no matter what the oil looks like or what the analysis say,, the tolerances on these engines are very close.
U sound like u want 2 take care of your car, then u say 8000 on the oil , in reality it every 6 months or 5000 miles which ever comes first. just my thoughts jim

 

Absolutely, I totally agree on that. The 8,000 miles was the previous owner, I think he did all highway commute, and the computer puts him at around 10,000 miles based on that. I just picked up the car a few days ago, got it registered and logged in only about 50 miles when I found the airbox issues.

I will be doing a change soon, and will stick with a 1 year or 5,000 mile schedule. However since this is my weekend car, I will be lucky to get 3,000 miles in one year, but will still change it anyways.

I got 2 jugs of M1 0W-40, Mann HU718 oil filter, OEM copper drain plug washers, Pentosin PS fluid and Mann air filters ready to go. I bought a generic cabin air filter that is well reviewed on Amazon, but still figuring out what manual tranny fluid and rear diff fluid I should use. I also noticed the coolant is green instead of blue, so will likely need to attend to that as well.

Overall, very pleased with this car and enjoying the process with it.

 

Thanks for the link, that's likely my next upgrade!

 

The original antifreeze is blue, the Zerex G05 is yellow, draining the original blue leaves some still in the system and adding the Zerex gives you a greenish fluid. But change it anyway as the wrong fluid harms the engine block material slowly.

 

I have had this Needswings Intake for 11 years and I can tell ya its worth every penny
He makes a dual intake now to if ya like the more balanced look but mine was one of the first ones prior to the dual intake design

 

Hey Rob at Needswings : look at Gary's CAI in the previous post and compare to mine in post 2.
Which is the original design ?

 

That's great info, makes sense to me. Since I'm not sure the FCA dealer has the right coolant anymore, just go get the Mercedes blue stuff?

 

Congrats on your recent purchase of a Crossfire Coupe & welcome to our Forum. As you have already learned, lots of great advice from experienced Crossfire Owners here.