Intake Upgrade on Specialty Auto Car

The first picture is of how it came.

The next two are of the location of where I routed it to, between the wheel well liner and the body of the car, just behind the passengers door jam.

I used this location, because it is infront of the engine and doesn't have any heated air. It was also easy and convenient and protected from the elements.

Here are some pictures of intstalling it and what it looks like afterwards. I bought a slightly smaller diameter filter to make it easy to fit in the area I wanted to move it to in above photos.

I bought some 3"id air hose that is heavy duty with double spun fiberglass inbedded to keep it from wanting to deform over the years and is resistant to heat transfer. It also has the wire built into it to keep its shape, but also allows it to bend around corners and such. It is also neoprene lined to make the air flow smooth on the inside.

The area between the wire hoop is perfect for placing the clamps and getting a really nice tight seal.

Steve,

Great pictures and discription of you mod. Have you noticed any change in performance with the relocation or the reduction in the size of the air cleaner ?

After install photos, first two are looking in from trunk, this area will still be covered with a intake insulation blanket to prevent any heat transfer to the intake air.

I kept the first section of metal intake because of the emissions tube being placed there, and it made it easier to take on and off later.

The last picture is what it looks like looking in from the engine access cover inside the car.

The size reduction in the filter is so small it is irrelevent, especially since it is a K&N low restriction filter. I had this summer put in a temporary air tube to route air to the filter and this made a significant difference in temperatures above 85 degrees.

This is even better and will only make more hp or given a certain amount of required hp for the driving condition the car will use less fuel and also run slightly cooler. It is all better and putting the intake insulation on the part of the intake that is running through the engine bay area to prevent heat soak will make it even better, but this is not done yet, I'm waiting for the material I ordered to do it with.

Understand, with OBDII and a portable computer and software I know precisely the differences changes make on the engine.

For a given section of road and environmental conditions, I can read the intake air temperature, know the calculated load, amount of fuel trim being used, and so on and so on. So this is not a guess, it is a fact supported by real numbers during some testing I did this summer. This is even better then my temporary setup used for testing.

I know the future turbo cars will be more like this in a sense, and I suspect all of the future normally aspirated cars will have this standard or at least as an option.

The one and only drawback is the filter location is now closer to the ground and if you can never drive through water that would submerge the filter.

Of course the filter is above the door line, so you could go as deep as the bottom of your door and not worry. I can't imagine ever going through water even half that deep.

Steve,

Very impressed to hear about the testing you did to prove the issue. Did you consider ducting the air supply to the grill in the engine lid ? or was this not an option because of the potential low pressure zone that might exist there. Also from your testing what was the temperature swing that you noticed with the relocation of the filter.

If you look at the pictures of the engine bay, that is with the engine access covers pulled, when I put them back on, that is an encloses trunk area. The engine air grill is not opened up to the outside air at all. I did consider partitioning the trunk on the left and right side of the engine grill and opening up the engine grill. But man that is a lot more work for the benefit. The benefit to doing that would have been a shorter intake, and higher filter location.

The drawbacks would have been also a loss of 1/3 trunk space, the intake running up hill could allow rain water to potentially collect on the filter and run down the intake into the engine.

It was a pretty easy decision considering the benefits versus downsides of both options.

I will be insulating the intake today, and do some driving and analyze the intake versus outside air temperature. The numbers should be even better then this summers results, which were generally a reduction of the temperature difference to half what it was before I installed an air tube just feeding cold air to the filter in its original location. That was temporary to see the effect of reducing intake temperatures, this is permanent and should give much larger decreases in intake temperature. My goal would be to have the intake temperature always match outside temperature, but we will soon find out how close I have come.

Ok, now I see what I'm looking at. I was confused between your pictures and the one of Johns IM where the filter was right under the gril. Having all the space behind the engine for a trunck must be great. Please keep me posted on your testing and good luck!

Here is a picture of the intake after installing the insulation.

The next picture is of the trunk with the engine access covers in place.

And the last picture is of my exhaust after I did the exhaust wrap from the headers back to the second catalytic converter.

Originally, I would have been running an intake temperature that was 50 degrees above outside air temperature and the difference varied and usually got worse as it got hotter especially above 85 degrees.

We will know more when it gets hot out to be sure, but I'm pretty confident the ratio isn't going to change a lot.

Here are some results that I obtained today.

The outside air temperature was 45 degrees. I started the car that was totally at outside air temperature. The intake temperature went from 45 degrees just before start up to 60 degrees almost instantly just after starting the engine. I'm guessing a little here, but since the engine hadn't even begun to warm up, I'm guessing that the air is somewhat compressed by the time it reaches the intake air temperature sensor. This compression of the air would naturally cause the temperature of the air to increase.

I drove the car from work to home. This consisted of in town driving and Intersate driving and lasted about 25 minutes. As some of you are painfully aware from watching the video. My intake temperature rose from the 60 degrees to about 63 until I hit the Interstate. After hitting the Intersate and getting the car up to full operating temperature, the intake temperature rose to 63-68 degrees depending on the amount of load being placed on the engine. When I got off of the Interstate the engine coolant temperature continued to run at full temperature and varied between 64-61 degrees.

In conclusion, I would say at 45 degrees the temperature rise on the intake rose very little or none from heat sink in the intake path. I think what little it did rise was caused mostly by increases in the volume of air and resulting compression effects. I can't really do anything about that since I'm not about to change the intake on the engine itself and it is the same diameter as the rest of my intake.

We will know more when it is 100 degrees out, but I'm guessing that I have achieved and intake with almost zero increase in intake air temperature caused by intake heat sink. I'm happy, and I think the project has given me results that are better then I had even hoped.