I took a picture, but my wife has the camera at them moment. I bought some alta boost tubes during their turkey day sale, as well as a few other items. I installed the stubby antenna immediately as it only took a few seconds. Two nights ago, I finally got to the tubes. The car had been sitting in the garage for at least 2 weeks. I started with the hot side, and it was almost a cakewalk. The only issue was getting at the screw on the silencer.

I then moved on to the cold side. I removed the air intake to discover that the assembler had torn all 3 rubber bushings on the bottom of the airbox. It looked like the airbox was just forced down without any kind of inspection. I was able to pop all of the bushings back into a reasonable condition, so I'll live with that for now.

I then disconnected the noise maker with ease. I disconnect the upper band clamp, and removed the ring that holds the upper elbow to the y pipe that the noise maker hose attaches to. I removed the elbow and . There is SAND in my INTAKE!!! I'm not talking one or two grains, there were several pinches of sand in there. It was resting inside of the y pipe, on the lip, but some was down close to the throttle body. The car has not even had its first oil change as its only got 6000 on the clock. It was a pain in the ****, but I removed the lower part of the cold pipe, and finished installing the alta tube so that I could get my mini on the road. My other car (WRX) is down again due to a transfer case issue and I was tired of borrowing the wife's mini...van.

How do I proceed? Is it even possible that irreversible damage was not done to the engine? I pulled the PCV tube off, while I was trying to get the lower boost tube off, and noticed a ton of oil in it. I assume its the PCV tube... back of the head, passenger side, appears to go under the intake manifold, has a squeeze disconnect on it. I actually need to take the car in for a few warranty issues. Yes few. The driver's side visor light won't turn off, ever. The gas gauge is NOT accurate. I was trying to get to a gas station when my gauge went from 3 candy corns to 2. Apparently, 2 candy corns = fumes, not liquid. I was stranded with 2 candy corns of gas in the tank. It also has the timing belt start up chatter, which has gotten MUCH worse since the cold weather. I'm not sure if it's covered, but I have several rattles that are driving me nuts. Not bad, I'm just picky. And finally, I'm going to see if there's anything they can do about the driver's door closing on me on even level surfaces.

Back on topic. What should I do about the sand. I cleaned out the throttle body as best I could, but I had to drive the car. Is there anything that can be done at this point???

 

I can't help you with the other stuff, but I can tell you that my door does exactly the same thing. I think it's just characteristic of the door to do that, but I could be wrong. Best thing to do would be to talk to your dealer.

 

put the stock tube back on and bring it back to the dealer... so that they can do something about it under warranty. if you bring it to them with the aftermarket tubing on, they will just tell you your warranty is void for altering that part of the car which contains the issue

 

Um, how is it even possible to have that much sand in the cold side tube? Isn't the that after the air filter? Did somebody at the factory drop it in a pile of sand while installing and not properly clean it, or what?

I hope the damage isn't too severe, but that amount of foreign matter in your intake is never a good thing.

 

The cold tube is not only after the filter, but after the turbo and intercooler as well. When I removed the airbox, I did not really notice any sand. Same goes for the hot side tube. My guess is that the sand came in at the joint on the cold side tube. I'm not sure where I would have gotten into sand though.

The car ran fine through the holiday weekend. I'm going to keep watching the oil level and listening for any strange (to mini) noises.