Air Filter Damage

[Bear Creek Skunkworks]

Had the same thing happen to a customers airplane, RV14, when an Emag went 180 degrees out of time. Not only did it require replacement of the air filter it blew a 3 inch section out of the tailpipe. Very expensive to repair. No answer as to why this occurred.

[vic syracuse]

Yes, as stated, this was most likely caused from an earlier backfire. We see a few of these very year. Somehow it gets missed on the preflight. I seriously doubt it could happen in flight without a lot of damage elsewhere.

Vic

[Champ]

Good point on the snorkel. I’ll check it today.

[kevinsrv7.com]

Originally Posted by Champ

I had a dirty injector, cleaned it and did another GAMI Lean test using Savvy's procedure. The lean test came out good with .4 GPH spread. However at the end of the 3rd run I also did an in-flight mag check. I was aggressively leaned at this point and heard what I thought was a cylinder missing on both the Left & Right mags (a little worse on the Right).

On my walk around today I saw this on my intake filter.
Attachment 8967

It looks more like a backfire than a cylinder miss. Is it possible to get a backfire in a situation like this?

I'll be ordering a new filter K&N 33-2060.

Mine looked similar after about 500 hours. The metal mesh deteriorates over time and changes into the shape/position that the filter is oh slightly loaded to.

[Champ]

Took the cowl off - no damage or evidence of backfire in the snorkel. Pulled the air filter - damage to the pleats and breaks in the wire mesh. No bulge like Scott's picture. So, could be either backfire or weakened filter stressed mechanically like Kevin suggested.

New filter is on order from ACS.