dood it's not that hard to keep it mounted. cuz after reading ur post... and since it's been raining like hell here in cali... i started worrying too. cuz last nite on my way home... there was puddle of water... pretty deep and i drove through it slowly but there was still some splash. then i got paranoid... so this morning i woke up hella early to remove the filter... and guess what... water started dripping. it wasn't much but definitely enough to make me really paranoid and motivate me to start hacking away at the pipe.

here is how i did it. on the pipe it should have a sticker AEM. i started hacking it 1 in from the leg of the letter A. after that, i used a 60 grid sand paper to sand around the piping, just so it doesn't cut the filter. then vaccum the inside of the tube and the surrounding side in the engine bay. then use a wet towel to wipe the inside of the pipe... just to make sure u get all the metal crap. then connect the filter. the filter should sit right above a metal tube wrapped with rubber. look at the red circle. here are pics of it.




here is the bottom piping that was cut due to rubbing... and it made a slight cut through the pipe... and that was the culprit for the screaching sound i posted in the engine forum... it seems there was excess air being sucked in from the cut... and made screaching sounds on top of the regular hissing sound.


hope that helped...