wrenchmonster

Just wanted to show some pictures of my ISR and what I did for cold air. The ISR I made was fairly standard. The only thing different I did over others I've seen is to sleeve the outside pipe itself with 3" exhaust pipe on the inside. That way I could buy an 3-2.5" adapter from the parts store that was nice and tight and avoid loose fitting plumbing adapters.

For the cold air part I noticed that if I removed the overflow bottle there were two large holes in the front clip. I then built a custom box to go over those holes. On one side I used one of the bolts for the radiator and on the other side one of the nuts that holds the receiver/dryer in place. There were some gaps I had around the box, and I accomplished sealing those by removing the grille and using a duct sealer from the inside. At one spot on the upper round hole I closed in with some gorilla tape.

I modified the lower section of the factory air box by adding a 3" port at the 8 o'clock position. I also plugged the original 3" port with a plastic cap. Note all the little holes I plugged, which was a previous effort. (And yes, it's white, but 100% silicone) I then used an expandable intake kit from the parts store to connect the new port in the air box to the custom box at the front clip.

The coolant bottle was simply flipped around. I built a small bracket at the bottom to hold the post and grommet from the tank. It lines up well with the lower nut to the receiver/dryer. On top I also built a custom bracket out of 1" angle iron. So the coolant bottle is held using the same points as the factory.

I'm happy with how it came out. I think it looks relatively clean and I know for sure I'm getting air from outside of the engine bay. Two things I've noticed however... One the dipstick is a little tight, not impossible to get to but tight. Second, you have to pull the coolant bottle to service the air filter. This is because the new position of the coolant bottle traps one of the clips for the air box. That's it tough, otherwise no issues.

Let me post this up and then I'll add some more pictures for you guys.

wrenchmonster

More pictures...

Here you can see the large holes that, for some reason, Toyota decided not to use but rather decided to pull air from behind the headlight. The box I built goes over these two large holes. you can see the gap at the aluminum box that I couldn't cover, that was the spot where I used the gorilla tape, the rest of it I sealed from the inside using duct sealer.

Also the ugly inside of the lower section of the factory air box. This is particularly ugly because I had to re-cut the hole. At first I didn't have the hole low enough in the housing for the filter to fit, so I had to lower it right at the bottom to accommodate the filter.

wrenchmonster

And even more pictures...

Factory filter fits easily. If you look carefully in this first picture you can see the bracket with the big hole in the lower left of the photo. That holds the grommet and post from the coolant bottle. In the second picture you can see the bracket I built for the top of the coolant bottle. This was made using 1" angle iron just in steps and then welded in place. I did also have to extend the hose from the radiator to the bottle and the exit hose from the bottle itself. There's no hood clearance issue at all. My hood closes easily and doesn't hit the new position of the coolant bottle.

RSR

Very cool mod. Thank you for sharing. I bet some folks would buy that custom airbox and radiator mount if you priced them out...
Sharing this over here, I'm sure there will be some discussion: https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...-setup-272137/

Were you unable to keep the PAIR resonator box, or did you not try?

Mind sharing notes on changes you saw in performance?

And a list of all the parts you purchased w/ sizes/dimensions would be awesome.

skipper0802

RSR's asking the same questions I am (especially your performance measurements from baseline to post-project). And nice job on the re-arrangement!

Scrussanation

i agree i like this!

wrenchmonster

Hey thanks guys, I appreciate the kind words. Let me see if I can fill in some of the gaps. And please let me know if I washed over something that needs more detail.

On the ISR mod:

- One 3" i.d. Electrical sweep
- Two pieces of 3" exhaust pipe, 2" long
- Two 3"-2.5/3" Spectre silicone adapters
- One 3/8" right angle hose barb
- One 1/2" right angle hose barb

Cut the sweep and fitted the exhaust pipe pieces on each end using silicone to glue them in place. Dry fitted to figure out where to locate the barbs and their orientation. Shortened the barb so it wouldn't stick so far into the tube, glued with silicone. I wanted to use the Spectre adapters because I wasn't satisfied with what I found at the hardware store. These are super tight, and they allow for future upgrades if I want to go with a 3" i.d. throttle body in the future.



For the cold air intake mod:

- One 8' section of 1/16th" 2"x2" aluminum angle
- One 4' section of 1/16" thick 1/2" aluminum angle
- Two Spectre 3" plastic mounts/plates
- 3/16" and 1/8" pop rivets
- One Spectre 3" flexible intake hose

To build the box I cut two pieces of the 2x2 angle roughly 5-3/4" long for the sides and to fit over the two holes. The bottom of the box is about 3" wide. I drilled one rivet at the bottom and used this as a pivot point to figure out how wide to made the top by simply holding it over the two holes and figuring out the best fit. Once I did that I simply capped the top, ran the 1/2" angle around the edges, cut the 3" hole for the mount, and sealed up everything from the inside with some silicone.

For the air box I basically just cut the hole and siliconed the plate from the inside. Note that in both cases I had to trim the crap out of the plate to make it work. Not knowing if things are going to work out as planned I am always hesitant to cut into the body, but honestly if I were doing it again, the easy thing to do would be to make a 3" hole in the front clip and then install the plastic mount. I'd make a steel reinforcement plate to strengthen everything and seal it all up with silicone. That would have been way easier and less time consuming than building the aluminum box. More importantly it would have eased the bend from the front clip to the new entry into the air box. It was tight and at maximum flex to get it to fit.

I also would have done the hole into the air box differently. Instead of using the plastic mount I would simply use a chunk of metal exhaust pipe. It would have allowed a slightly longer protrusion of the fitting outside of the air box. This is because the plastic mount is flat and the inside of the air box is curved. Using a piece of metal pipe would have allowed cutting custom length tabs on the pipe end and simply gluing those in place from the inside.

The coolant bottle was easy, just flip it around. An L-bracket at the bottom held by the lower nut on the receiver/dryer with a big hole on top to accept the post and grommet from the bottle. On top I used some 1" steel angle and just created steps down to meet the front clip. Of course I had to extend the hoses too.

Concerning performance... I honestly haven't had it on there even one full tank of gas. So I can't give you any true stats. It does "feel" better to me as far as throttle response. I mainly did the ISR mod to get the piping away from the headers. The cold air set up I did because I never liked the restricted intake from behind the headlight. Not only that, but I felt any time you had your headlights on you would invariably draw in air that was higher than ambient temperatures.

It's strange looking at those big holes, it's seems like such an obvious place to draw air from, at least for the 3.0. And it's perfectly protected as the grille itself has more plastic at the ends and is open in the center. I thought about drilling holes in the grille too, but felt it wasn't needed and that would only increase the bugs and rain and stuff getting into the air box.

I was looking at the PAIR resonator and I think I can hook it back up. A simple plate to shift the mounts back would allow this to be reinstalled, so there is space for it. I'm also working on a way to get around having to remove the coolant bottle to service the air filter. Should be pretty easy, I just need to create a clip to hold that side of the top and simply remove the factory clip. I'll add a picture of that when I get around to it.

I hope this answers some questions. If you have others, again, feel free to ask for clarification or specifics.

Cyberman

Nice work. I understand that you made the box, so that you could get air from both of the holes in the rad support. But, instead of the box, why not just a funnel that utilizes that round hole on the top?

I guess I'm a little too lazy to make a box like that. You obviously have the skills.

wrenchmonster

Thanks Cyberman. The upper hole is not 3" i.d. so you'd have to cut the metal to maintain the correct i.d. through the system.

The reason I approached the mod by making the aluminum box was to see if I could do it without hacking into the sheet metal. And I was able to accomplish my goal. But you're right, it's a lot of extra work to fabricate the aluminum box. If I were doing it again I'd probably just drill a 3" hole for the mount/plate to go. Then I'd reinforce everything with a steel plate made to match the plastic mount. That way you wouldn't loose any structural integrity of the front clip (rad support). Bringing the mount closer to the front would actually make it easier to install the 3" flexible duct as it would have an extra 2" to make the bend to meet the air box. And with that in mind, if I were to make the box again I'd use 1" angle instead of 2".

BigBluePile

iTrader: (3)

Very cool, nice job

RSR

Is that electrical sweep hard PVC or a flexible material? I've thought about trying a silicone hose primarily for heat protection over the exhuast pipe but hadn't thought of that. Was thinking that a high temp ceramic exhaust temp paint was easiest, but your project has me rethinking. And it looks good too!

For the barbs, you drilled/cut through both sweep and exhaust? Some silicone shop makes connections that runs into their silicone connectors/couplers that I thought about using instead of drilling into an exhaust and disrupting airflow...

wrenchmonster

BigBluePile, thank you, glad you like it.

RSR, the electrical sweep is a hard plastic. The metal exhaust pipe is only right at the ends. I cut a 2" piece off and tapped it in 1" on both ends. They were snug fitting, but I used silicone to glue them in and take care of any air leaks. So in answer to your question when I tapped in for the barbs I was only going through plastic.

High temp paints aren't needed. This intake tube will never get hot enough for the paint to become a factor. And after a while the tube will become the same temperature as the rest of the engine bay. The best thing one could do would be to add a heat shield over the manifold/headers or a heat shield for the intake tube itself. Alternatively a wrap of some sort... anything to insulate it. But the electrical sweep is pretty thick. I myself, doubt any additional shielding or insulation would be of much value. I'm not sure of the silicone connectors you're talking about, so if you've got a link throw it up.

I think RSR asked earlier about the little resonator box there. I added a picture. It would be super easy to reinstall. All one would have to do is rotate it back slightly as you can see in my picture. This problem might be overcome if the aluminum box wasn't there too as that would ease the bend and allow more space over the tube so it didn't contact the bottom of the resonator. We'll find out when someone does this mod without the aluminum box.

Today I took care of the air box filter change problem I encountered earlier in the design. The problem being that with relocating the coolant bottle you can't unclip the strap that holds down the top of the air box on that side. So to change the air filter I'd have to unbolt one 10m bolt and remove the coolant bottle. And while this is no big deal, I decided that I didn't like that flaw. So I built a crazy bracket clamp that could be accessed from above, and hence allow the air filter change without having to fuss with the coolant bottle.

wrenchmonster

Here you can see it all painted and installed. I basically just worked some angle over, plug welded a piece of all-thread and then built the clamping mechanism. The tubes you see are actually roll pins. On the foot of the clamp itself I welded the roll pin to the bottom so when you clamped down from above it stayed aligned with the rod and pressed down straight. The roll pin on top just serves as a spacer. The wing nut I made was just a couple of nuts welded together with a small piece of rod welded on one side. You can also see where I added a couple of 3/16" rivets to stabilize the lateral movement. One rivet would have been fine actually but I'd already drilled two holes in the bracket.

When I was cleaning up today I noticed the left over chunks from cutting the electrical sweep. I cut them to the same height and then lashed then together like you'd lash two poles. One is actually slightly bigger since it's made as the female end that you cut off to make the intake tube. Anyway, lashed together and they sit almost perfectly on the space behind the shifter and in front of the seat. And now I have holders for those bigger cups.

wrenchmonster

Just one more picture of it with the coolant bottle back in position. Clearance is tight. But honestly this whole crazy bracket is probably a little much. There's probably a simpler way to clamp that edge of the air box... I'm sure there's a store bought latch you could find and add to the air box in just a few minutes. But I wanted something custom and I wanted a hold-down in the exact same spot where it was held before.

RSR

Here's the coupler: http://www.siliconeintakes.com/produ...81b9925c526454

Here's the post I discussed what I was thinking: https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...l#post52111071

Also, max redline sells mandrel bent pipe -- I'm still leaning towards that route (might try a silicone hose over it nonetheless instead of paint but haven't decided, definitely think some heat protection on the intake pipe would help, and if painting anyways which I probably will...): http://store.max-redline.com/servlet...Pipe-45/Detail

And linked in my post above, but they found 30% increased flow w/ mandrel over crush bend piping on a flow machine... Would think that pvc would show flow characteristics in between for gentle bends and closer to crush bends on tight...

wrenchmonster

That looks like that could all work well together. I like that aluminum tube. Though, one could argue that (unprotected and uninsulated) any of the metal tubes would conduct more heat into the airstream than the pvc. The question is... if everything inside the engine bay heats up to a certain temp eventually... How much is the air being heated by the distance it has to travel from outside to your throttle body? The only way to find out would be to run temp probes, one where the airstream enters and one just before the throttle body.

You mentioned flow, so I've added a picture of the inside of my pipe. You can see I trimmed the barbs as flat as I could. When making the holes in the pipe for the barbs I was super careful to get a very tight fit. They're pretty much a press fit into the pipe with the silicone just taking care of any air leakage. Nothing to ever come loose or fall down into the pipe. I also smoothed the seam of the exhaust pipe... and while I could argue this was for air flow, really it was to prevent cutting my fingers up while servicing later. Anyway, it's pretty smooth in there. I'd say pretty darn close to a mandrel bent pipe.

RSR

Yes, that's my concern about heat too. Hence either silicone wrap and/or high temp paint...

Engine bay temp varies dramatically -- largely due to 1) engine load (how much fuel it's burning) and 2) speed at which car is moving/amount of airflow through engine bay.

The longer one can keep air cool the better; however, most intake testing I've seen has shown that once air gets into the system (true cold air intakes, pulling air from outside the engine bay, are important), the speed at which air moves through the intake (largely a matter of flow) seems to matter more than the heat transfer due to intake tube material...
Not sure how accurate that is, but if we can make progress on/towards both, then why not do it?

And again, I really like your intake. I doubt it flows as good as mandrel, but definitely better than crushed bent pipe, and I think better than the spectre kits many others have used too... And 100% absolutely w/o any doubt is better than the factory setup on numerous levels. Not criticizing, just learning/sharing my thought process. Yours is

wrenchmonster

Oh no worries man, sorry if I came off being defensive. That wasn't my intent at all, just showing that I did take some time to address the flow concerns inside the pipe. I forgot to mention too that after I had installed the exhaust pipe sleeves that I went in behind and filled that small gap with silicone too, just to smooth it all out. But seriously, next time your in home depot go take a look inside one of them. It's hard to see in the picture, but it's smooth in there. Anyway, I think the areas around the silicone connectors are probably more of a concern than rest of the tube as far as any turbulence is concerned.

And getting back to the heat problem... it sounds like we both have an understanding of the basic principles here. Just as having a scoop would be ideal, you wouldn't want to have a long thin tube wrapping around the inside of the engine bay before it hooked up to the throttle body. And speaking of scoops...

I was thinking about that today. It wouldn't be that tough actually. I think you might be able to wedge one in that space. You could have a short piece of silicone tubing and directly connect the AFM with the throttle body. Connect the pcv and a/c line to the silicone coupler. You'd probably want to rotate the pipe ends on the a/c line and the PAIR, but cut and weld there or cut and splice with rubber hose. Then simply build a custom air box off of the AFM connection. Of course at that point you'd also have to cut a huge hole in your hood and deal with building a scoop, but that's not too tough. You might have to remove the tank of the master cylinder and do a remote reservoir. It's definitely do-able.

The bigger question I think is the return on investment. Spending a bunch of time on intakes can only ever yield so much in my humble opinion. Personally I see more potential in developing a distributorless ignition system, for example. Think about how cool that would be for a second...

RSR

Not a problem. Just wanted to make sure you knew I wasn't ragging. This is hands down the best intake mod on the factory base setup I've seen yet...

I was out looking at my truck this evening. I'm thinking about doing the following.

1) Keeping the factory intake setup, with add'l air holes I drilled out (definitely helped it breathe better btw)
2) ISR delete and remove lower chamber.
3) I can now run a direct line between the lower oval hole and the lower passenger side of the box. Between the factory intake and this add'l breathing hole (thinking it's roughly equivalent a 1.75" pipe/hose).

The only downside as I see it is that it drops my intake height a couple inches... At first thought, I might find one of the mid 90s 4 cylinder accord plastic intake tubes w/ lower reservoirs for just in case... Like this:


Not at the top of my to dos, but definitely something I'll post when I get around to it. Def before end of year.

wrenchmonster

I'm not sure I completely follow you RSR, what do you mean by removing the "lower chamber" ? Are you talking about just a standard ISR tube?

It sounds like you're trying to maintain the factory air box, and the factory air intake from behind the headlight. Is that correct?

And then beyond having the factory set up for air intake, you plan on picking up some additional air from the lower (oval) hole on the radiator support. Is that correct?

Certainly all do-able. I'll look forward to seeing how your mod turns out. One thing about picking up air from either of those holes on the radiator support... you have to do something with the coolant overflow bottle. If you wanted to maintain the factory air intake from behind the headlight, I don't think you can flip the coolant bottle around like I did. I think you'll have to find a different tank. But that's super easy to do, just something to consider while you're designing.

I have no idea what you're planning to do with that honda civic intake tube... can you put some arrows up there with some explanations so we can all see what you're planning. Also, how is any of this going to change the height of your intake manifold? You must be talking about the fresh air tubing/intake tubing... but why is it being lower a problem and where would it be lower?

For the record, I *think* I know where you're going on this... but I want to keep this information clear for those who might stumble upon this thread a year from now. Thanks.

Oh, by the way... I just filled up with gas today. So hopefully in a week or so I'll have some fuel mileage results for you guys. This truck is actually my beater/work truck so I don't drive it very much. Stay tuned.