I pretty much agree with everything Dean just stated... To be more efficient, you'd want rid of the sharp 90 degree bends. That said, Much like measuring the airflow of a car with the windows down vs. up, once the overall volume meets capacity, the pressure will force the flow around the open windows. I lost a bet on the numbers being worse than they ended up being when we were at Aerodyn in Mooresville North Carolina for a windtunnel test day for an article I wrote...

In the case of the tubes Dixie ran, once the tubes meet capacity, the volume will be forced thru the box. I'd expect this to help as speeds increase. You're limited in space behind the bumper, but I'd focus on the radius of the connectors to improve on the design...

Dixie you hit a homerun with this one!

Mike

 

I do think this is an interesting and potentially effective design. If you could find a pipe that was flatter rather than round you would have more volume, but as Mike says, better radius connectors is the place to start, and the air pressure will push the air through the pipe.

I'm not so sure about the v-flow and similar filter/airbox solutions which either have a smaller area filter, don't have enough airflow or let hot air into the airbox. (the exception is the UMW carbonfibre airbox, which is well designed and should be an improvement).

I was told a story about one of the Australian tuners who did a dyno run with the stock airbox and stock paper filter, then took out the airfilter (temporarily!) and ran the dyno test again and came up with the same result. This tells me that the stock setup is pretty good, however once we start increasing the HP for these cars the flow & resistance of the intake/filter become more important, and dixie's solution would be beneficial for a modded car.

Another improvement I have thought of is to insulate the airbox better from the motor heat. This would have the same effect as increasing the size/efficiency of the intercoolers, reducing the temps of the charge. I have been told that during normal driving the airflow around the engine is good and the engine bay temps are not too bad, so maybe insulating the airbox is not needed?? But dixie's design should (and appears to) also reduce the intake air temp, which helps.

 

Everyone is putting forward small improvements....

But, I have to hand it to you, for 99.9% of us, this is a superb mod.

Thank you for sharing.


If I were a tuner on this board, I would contact dixie and sell a kit making this super easy for any tech to do and price the kit under 200 dollars. You would own the market.
Templates, glue, pictures, etc.....it should be pretty easy to do as the parts are all Lowes/Home depot. In fact, you could paint things to look more OEM and really make this a win-win.....so tuners out there, contact Dixie please. Soon.





JB

 

Dixie,

in your opinion would a 100mm x 50mm rectangular conduit work? I'd like to do the same thing but figure if i'm going to do it then i should try and get maximum sized openings.

I'm also going to try and create a funnel on the inlet side so that it catches more air.

great idea!!!!

 

Dean, I'm with you. Based on my own research I don't think any of the aftermarket airboxes (and I'm not singling out any of them) are worth the upgrade, other than the UMW Carbon unit, and that one costs a pretty penny.

I think Dixie's design is very close to where it needs to be.

Mike

 

I'm not sure a 100x50mm will work but you can try,just take the bumper of,you can put temporarely a bigger hose on it and try to put the bumper back.
I'm sure my invention can be made better but I'm glad you like my idea.
I'm sure it can't be a bad system because a lot of cars use this to get fresh air.

 

following

 

Why two tubes wont a thick one to one side do the same result?

 

good stuff

 

very interesting.

 

Nice work Dixie! I don't think you should give up on the 2nd snorkle idea yet though. Your snorkle design does not use as big an opening in the factory shroud as mine does, and has a 90-deg bend before going in the stock airbox. If you sort that out, I think you'll find that at speed it flows much better than your tube mod (I'd be concerned about the backpressure comment above, and the size of the ducting - flat rectangular would be perfect IMHO). I don't have IAT measurements myself, but at cruising speeds the car runs noticably cooler on the temp gauge just as a result of the snorkle mod.

Good luck, and keep us posted.

 

Jimmer
Which is your design?? Images?

 

Awesome thinking... I did the same on my old 98 cobra...

Bigger piping vs. current piping would be interesting, but with smaller piping I would assume higher pressure and higher velocity of air... Maybe the incoming air side (by the intercoolers) you could fit a bigger scoop to increase ram air affects.

 

Well done Dixie!!!!