Hi there,
A fair proportion of the air entering the engine will be through the filter, if the are hose is only cracked it should not be a huge problem, needless to say that any unfiltered air is undesirable but these things do happen. Depending on where you live and the road conditions that you drive on will be a factor. Dusty outback roads will cause more problems than city driving. The problems will be long term, the grill entering the engine will be abrasive on rings and cyl walls, but I feel that you will have no worries and that the small amount of grill will not be a big problem. For any fault so show up in the short term you would be needing to toss in hand fulls to do serious short term damage.
Mark (mhpautos)
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Thursday, October 4th, 2007 AT 7:10 PM