endeffect0
15+ Year Contributor
- 544
- 2
- Sep 19, 2006
-
Lancaster Area,
Pennsylvania
I decided not to thread jack the ram air headlight thread that motivated me to turn around and take pictures of the ram air set up I made a year ago. If my work desk were not located in my garage this would likely never have been posted.
This bit of custom fabrication came to be one day when I was trying to eek out every last little bit of timing I could and fighting underhood temps that were hot enough to MELT my factory ac/secondary fan. its proximity to the glowing turbo did not help but still way way to hot.
15$ a trip to the hardware store and a 15$ case of beer + an evening of tinkering yielded the following result.
as you can see the intake takes the place of the factory fog-light taking advantage of the area of highest pressure on the entire car. the modification is not all that noticeable, certainly much less so than a 3 inch exhaust and i assume it is ignored by every non car person who walks by.
you can also see the sheet aluminum air intake i made for the sidemount intercooler. yes i am still running a side mount. no i wont go to a front mount, its against my religion.
I created a cold air box in the location the fuse box and air filter normally sit. this was made of scrap aluminum, pop rivets, and uses that large under hood heat shield as a lid, and was also sandwiched between two pieces of aluminum on the walls.
the feed from the ram air enters right behind the head light and is made of the flexible hose. The intake is bolted to the sheet metal and makes a tight seal between that and the adapter for the air filter. my homemade intercooler piping shares this space and a little duct tape created a soft edge and tight seal where it passes through the air box.
yes my engine-bay is full of Frankenstein like low buck hacks.
under the lid you get a sense of whats really going on. the heat shield go up to the headlight and seals quite well all around. it utilizes many of the pre-existing bolt holes in the area to hold it down. Not shown is the greatly enlarged hole in my fender from which the stock intake originally drew air. that helped too i am sure but likely also allows the great amount air to escape out that direction rather than building pressure in the box. oh well.
the whole arrangement works quite well and provides a ton of cold air to the filter. yes those are bird feathers, more on that in a second.
to build it I visited the roofing section of the local hardware store and picked up an appropriate looking funnel shaped fixture that is used as flashing between the roof and vent-tubes. see what you can find, this one was selected because it was the Perfect shape and fit around the foglights with a nice taper back to 3inches.
next i grabbed a 3 to 2.5 reducer for a dryer vent hose, and the 2.5 hose obviously. three was too big to snake around.
a little cutting trimming and riveting affixed the whole assembly to the bumper. the flex pipe is held on by a zip tie. if you dont think you in a high pressure zone consider what it feels like to hold your arm out the window fully extended at 100mph. really tighten that zip tie.
go ahead and do what you want for the air box. mine worked well and was modeled first with a pizza box then cut out of scrap aluminum. I used the hood insulator as lid and to insulate between the two layers of aluminum on the side.
----------------------
Observations.
It works really really well.
other observations.
my intake temp is now +- 2 degrees of what the signs say at the banks when i drive by them. If i am sitting in traffic at a stand still i can see temps up to 5 degrees higher than what the banks claim. i suspect most of this is the difference between 2 inches above the black top and 12foot in the air.
The flexible pipe has acted as a fail safe when it come through deep puddles. during a flood it popped of the reducer rather than suck water into the air box.
a cold air intake in the same location would have hydro locked the motor.
My highest intake temps come when paying around at night in snow filled parking-lots. it involves alot of boost, glowing down pipes and most significantly a bumper packed with snow. (I have legal permission by owner to use the parking lot, because i am the owner. the police have a hard time accepting that...)
my lowest intake temps are when its not snowing and still very cold.
ITs important to note that my air filter is regularly completely packed full of crap. anything that is bouncing around on the high way or floating in the air will be sucked into that filter. note the bird feathers. i change or clean my filter every season and this is still not often enough. seriously you pick up a lot of crap.
More Ranting:
i think its a complete success and i would do it again the exact same way. the abused air filters are proof of the quantity of cold air this thing sucks up and if you are on dirt or salted roads you are actually getting cleaner air then if you were pulling from the engine bay. after one rallyx my engine bay was completely covered in dirt but under the lid of the box it was very clean. if i cared more i would put on a lid with a proper hinge, but i dont.
Edit: Please excuse the lack of effort toward spelling and grammar just wanted to quickly share something.
This bit of custom fabrication came to be one day when I was trying to eek out every last little bit of timing I could and fighting underhood temps that were hot enough to MELT my factory ac/secondary fan. its proximity to the glowing turbo did not help but still way way to hot.
15$ a trip to the hardware store and a 15$ case of beer + an evening of tinkering yielded the following result.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
as you can see the intake takes the place of the factory fog-light taking advantage of the area of highest pressure on the entire car. the modification is not all that noticeable, certainly much less so than a 3 inch exhaust and i assume it is ignored by every non car person who walks by.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
you can also see the sheet aluminum air intake i made for the sidemount intercooler. yes i am still running a side mount. no i wont go to a front mount, its against my religion.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
I created a cold air box in the location the fuse box and air filter normally sit. this was made of scrap aluminum, pop rivets, and uses that large under hood heat shield as a lid, and was also sandwiched between two pieces of aluminum on the walls.
the feed from the ram air enters right behind the head light and is made of the flexible hose. The intake is bolted to the sheet metal and makes a tight seal between that and the adapter for the air filter. my homemade intercooler piping shares this space and a little duct tape created a soft edge and tight seal where it passes through the air box.
yes my engine-bay is full of Frankenstein like low buck hacks.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
under the lid you get a sense of whats really going on. the heat shield go up to the headlight and seals quite well all around. it utilizes many of the pre-existing bolt holes in the area to hold it down. Not shown is the greatly enlarged hole in my fender from which the stock intake originally drew air. that helped too i am sure but likely also allows the great amount air to escape out that direction rather than building pressure in the box. oh well.
You must be logged in to view this image or video.
the whole arrangement works quite well and provides a ton of cold air to the filter. yes those are bird feathers, more on that in a second.
to build it I visited the roofing section of the local hardware store and picked up an appropriate looking funnel shaped fixture that is used as flashing between the roof and vent-tubes. see what you can find, this one was selected because it was the Perfect shape and fit around the foglights with a nice taper back to 3inches.
next i grabbed a 3 to 2.5 reducer for a dryer vent hose, and the 2.5 hose obviously. three was too big to snake around.
a little cutting trimming and riveting affixed the whole assembly to the bumper. the flex pipe is held on by a zip tie. if you dont think you in a high pressure zone consider what it feels like to hold your arm out the window fully extended at 100mph. really tighten that zip tie.
go ahead and do what you want for the air box. mine worked well and was modeled first with a pizza box then cut out of scrap aluminum. I used the hood insulator as lid and to insulate between the two layers of aluminum on the side.
----------------------
Observations.
It works really really well.
other observations.
my intake temp is now +- 2 degrees of what the signs say at the banks when i drive by them. If i am sitting in traffic at a stand still i can see temps up to 5 degrees higher than what the banks claim. i suspect most of this is the difference between 2 inches above the black top and 12foot in the air.
The flexible pipe has acted as a fail safe when it come through deep puddles. during a flood it popped of the reducer rather than suck water into the air box.
a cold air intake in the same location would have hydro locked the motor.
My highest intake temps come when paying around at night in snow filled parking-lots. it involves alot of boost, glowing down pipes and most significantly a bumper packed with snow. (I have legal permission by owner to use the parking lot, because i am the owner. the police have a hard time accepting that...)
my lowest intake temps are when its not snowing and still very cold.
ITs important to note that my air filter is regularly completely packed full of crap. anything that is bouncing around on the high way or floating in the air will be sucked into that filter. note the bird feathers. i change or clean my filter every season and this is still not often enough. seriously you pick up a lot of crap.
More Ranting:
i think its a complete success and i would do it again the exact same way. the abused air filters are proof of the quantity of cold air this thing sucks up and if you are on dirt or salted roads you are actually getting cleaner air then if you were pulling from the engine bay. after one rallyx my engine bay was completely covered in dirt but under the lid of the box it was very clean. if i cared more i would put on a lid with a proper hinge, but i dont.
Edit: Please excuse the lack of effort toward spelling and grammar just wanted to quickly share something.
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