I know that this may seem like a stupid question to some of you, but it has been nagging me for some time & figured I would ask it anyways.

Lets say that you bought a CAI kit and you had the car tuned for that specific CAI & filter. Now you want to change the filter however you cannot find the same "length/style" filter. Can you purchase a different size filter as long as it still fits on the end of the CAI without it affecting the tune?

i.e.
Current size filter


Replacement filter

 

Should be good to go...... no problems. If you were changing the size / diameter of the MAF housing, then you'd have problems.

 

That's what I thought, just needed some clarification though.

 

That's nice to know because not only did I not want to go through the cleaning process, but if I did and I had to go somewhere right away, then I'm stuck. Or one could swap in a fresh one and clean the dirty one later.

 

I would think you would want the replacement filter to be as close in surface area as the old one? not to much smaller

 

I would error on the safe side and just buy the proper replacement filter. It's not worth a 10 spot or so to me.