I answered your question in my original post. i stated that you don't have a good seal on the intake.

Your definition of a Cold Air intake has no relevance in the ranger community, actually i'll go as far as to say it has no relevance in any community that isn't drag racing. ANY intake you find will be marketed as a cold air intake, but as you've stuck to your guns to point out, its in the engine bay, sucking hot air.
which is still the same thing your free flow filter is doing. sucking in hot air from the engine bay.
you don't get a true cold air intake until you get into drag racing, where the intake is above the hood and gets fresh air.

 

Thank you for being polite and actually trying to help instead of just calling me an idiot like half the other people on here. I understand what your sayin about it still being a ranger and all and I agree with you, im not expectin some crazy power boost or something from this, just trying to help the little truck out anywhere I can. And true I know that unmetered air will throw those codes but as far as I can tell there is absolutely nowhere it could be leaking. So to my logic that must mean either faulty MAF or weird air-flow causing faulty reading. So the whole point of this thread was to see if anyone else had experiences this with their truck. Instead I was told I was "wasting my time" or told to "put my wrenches down" or called "ignorant." Way to welcome a new user to the forum guys, great job, I can feel the Ranger-ly Brotherness. Those of you that actually helped, please dis-regard the previous rant

 

StxDangerRanger, I know that, thats what I've been saying the whole time, But other people where trying very hard to convince me that they were the exact same thing, which is incorrect. I appreciate your comment about the seal not being good but there is nowhere it can be leaking from, the only things modified from stock were all before the MAF so even if it did leak it wouldnt matter. Thats why these lean codes make no sense, why im trying to figure them out, why I started this thread in the first place, to see if anyone else has had this strang problem before. Thank you.

 

my MAF went hay-wire on me a while back, truck wouldn't even start. i replaced it with a rebuild to the tune of $150 or so. so i certainly wouldn't try replacing it, it's just not worth it for what your going to get out of your set up. indeed many of us have small modifications done to our anemic engines, knowing it won't really make much difference. but it's not worth riding around with a CEL on or wasting much time on.

 

Yeah I agree with you, I just thought I throw the problem out there, see if anyone had heard of it before. Thanks for the helpful reply!

 

Andrew I would just put the stock box back in or.. find some intake tubing and run the filter down low as possible. Remember to run a K&N dry charger and a Bypass valve so you don't ingest water. Running it as low as possible is to intake the cool dense air that sits near the ground. This will only help if the intake tubing is plastic or composite material, why? well your engine will heat up a metal pipe (heat soak) and ruin the entire set up. But running the stock box and a premium free flowing filter is the best intake you can have. Ford designed to work leave it as is

 

Yeah I had considered doing that, only thing i wondered about was mud from offroadin cloggin the filter up, but i guess I could always just pull it off and wash it. kinda a hassle though haha