A friend just gave me this:

Has anyone seen one of these before? I've seen lots of them, but only on highly-tuned petrol engines. The element is woven steel mesh, so there is no oil in it to muck-up the MAF. Does it do a good job of filtering crud out of the air? Will microscopic dust particles collect inside my engine and cause it to explode in a ball of fire?

Secondly, should I fit it to my Fabia TDI? We did a trial run this evening - just tightened it onto the cold air feed pipe. The induction noise is devastating, but kind of industrial. Chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a whoooossssshhhh. The turbo whine is really obvious, too. I'm guessing the car will suffer massive heat-soak - what's the concensus on heat shields?

Is this an idiotic idea?

don't bother mate as said you'll get lots of heatsoak.

most people semto go for panel filter and a cupra 160 intake to free it up a bit with what seem to be decent results yet keeping a standard look

You could use it with a heat shield...however the shiled must make an enclosed unit to prevent heat soak.

The filter will let fine dust/particles through....looks like a metal gause filter a la INVO(sp?)...not as good as the standard paper filter or a cotton gause one as far as filtration is concerned.

It looks like a powertec,apprently they are specifically designed for the vag 1.8t engine,sounds the dogs but a race engineer told me to take it off as none of the induction kits work that well with the engine. most of the car mags for audi and vw recommend them though!!!go figure:)

you could try it with a UNI "sock" on it. That should be a good compromise.

OK, I fitted the cone yesterday morning. Was pretty easy to get it on using just the standard parts of the air feed pipe. Pulled the tube out of the box (where the two screws and O-ring are) and just tightened the jubilee clip on the neck. It was a very neat fit - should have got some pictures], but hey...

The noise is very loud. I don't know how to describe it, other than it sounds very industrial. Like a truck accelerating where you can hear the turbo whine and the induction whoosh. I kind of liked it.

A couple of petrolhead friends saw it and said they thought it looked cool as hell but sounded too raw.

I drove about for a while. At first it felt quite good - bit more revvy, but soon the heatsoak set in and the car lost A LOT of power. There's a tonne of heat in that bay! When I popped the bonnet, the cone was very, very warm. Not good.

So I took it off.

I think it would probably work OK with a decent heat shield. And it looks good. But I'm not going to keep it.

i ran one on my Renault 19, was the same material but a different make. this ran ok on the 16v for well over a year and was very easy to keep clean.

for the Octavia i've gone for the JR filtered Jabba induction kit, this is a cotton gauze type filter with a enclosed heat sheild that works very well and does stop heat soak.

like someone else said the for best results on the Fabia TDI/vRS a green panel filter and ibiza 160 intake seem to give the best results as heat soak isnt a problem.