Making REAL cold air intake from aluminum pipe
 

I have decided to make a cold air intake out of aluminum pipe for my 85 SE as well as for my 84 SE, the plan is to route the intake path down towards the front air dam, like a cold air intake, instead of the pointless short ram intake everyone else seems to prefer. ill post some pics and drawings later as well.

Making REAL cold air intake from aluminum pipe...
 

...is just as useless as every other "cold air intake" on the market.

concured, especially cause the -se has that hella restrictive AFM, it would be pointless and a waste of money to make a "cai" like your describing, and you will also suck shitloads of water in your intake when its wet out

It wouldnt be useless on a carbureted 12a then...would it?

...have you ever had a REAL cold air intake on a car? i have a 2002 RSX with a CAI and it makes a hell of a difference. i did another CAI for a friends' SE (drew air from the lower front with a bypass valve at the top) and it definately made a difference over stock. CAI's work, and hydrolocking is bullshit

i never said you would hydrolock, i said you will suck water up which will cause extra carbon buildups, enevitably shortening the life of your motor, with any kind of intake on an -se good luck getting more than 5 crank horsepower with it, and i would be impressed with that

depends on your under hood temps. i could have seen it being of use in my old Rx with the rats nest and all cats, but now the engine seems to run a lot colder...

you could spend $50 on metal piping and make it look pretty, or $5 on dryer hose and zip-ties, which will give the same effect, try it for yourself and see if you notice a difference :)

i havent....

it would probably be more restrictive than anything on a stock nikki, open filter is the way to go on carbs
ask rx7carl

if you are going to spend the money on piping...make a snorkel instead...it would be more functional ...you could ford streams and whatnot.

i see, im not trying to be an ass or anything, but we noticed a hell of a difference on his SE. the stock air intake location is basically a cold air type to begin with anyways, plus both of my SE's have fkt up airboxes (they no longer clamp down properly) so im just going to silicone them in place

I thought water removes the carbon. Somewhere on here is the Decarbonizing article, which says just dump water into the engine.

I tried it in my pickup. Removed the vacuum advance to the dizzy and stuck it into a 1qt bottle of water... Revved the engine and sucked down the water. (It took a while.)

The engine will run like shit sucking down water.

for the carbed motors in that same article you use a spray bottle of water and spray it into the carb as it runs and yes i thought it said water removed build up not oppisite

Hell, just go with dual Webbers that'll give you the boost you want ;)

Any metal adds weight. Adding any amount of weight to our small cars will negate the minimal HP gain that you get, no matter what your theories on a CAI are.

Yeah, maybe they're great on 3000 lb + Hondas, but on a lightweight car? I'm not seeing the advantage.

It clutters up the bay anyway :(

jays83gsl
im not sure your all right, everyone that knows a little about cars, the "colder" the air comming in is more dence and makes better hp. You need to take alot of things to acount for, for true proof of hp gaines id look for dynoes other wise whats 3 extra hp when you dont know how to get it to the back wheels

I'm not sure if you were agreeing with me or not :D

Anyway, I know that colder air is better (of course), but what I'm saying is that the weight gains compared to the ~10 HP can't possibly be THAT beneficial (not enough to warrant the extra work and cluttered engine bay)

Well, aluminum doesn't weight particularly anything, and piping it 3-4 feet surely doesn't add on enough weight to negate a 10HP increase, but that doesn't mean it's any more useful. As somebody that's put first gens on the dyno, and spent a fair amount of time on one (granted, not as much as some folks), there's a lot more to be gained by doing a proper tune and using some "trick" parts than fabbing up a POS-non-functioning-CAI.

My opinion on the matter is to take your car to somebody that knows what the fuck they're doing and have it tuned. The biggest boost in HP I've ever made on the dyno was just doing a proper tune, and I still had power left in the engine until I blew it up two weeks ago (don't go flying off the track backwards in a forward gear, kiddos). Wasting time and money on a fugly POS that won't even gain you any HP is not good. Spend the time and money on some compound and wax and shine the car up. You'll get off easier arguing with me that it lowers the coefficient of drag, thereby increasing the top speed, than you will telling me some ho-made aluminum CAI will boost HP. ;)

cold air intake
 

Well if you want it to flow you need to dump the stock air box and put an adapter on the end of the afm and attack a kn on the end. I have experimented with running piping from the afm to the front of the air dam by cutting a hole thru the side of the radiator support. I used the stock intake hose from the t/body to the afm. I did notice a difference on top speed. I would recommend first making the pipe from the t/body to the afm. Remember you need to keep the stock section that bolts on to the t/body. What you want to do is eliminate the ribbed section of the hose and replace it with steel piping. The reason for this that the ribbed section of our air intake hose is there to muffle sound. removing them you will cause a better rate of air into the system. 2nd thing i recommend is to take the
airintake sensor that is at the left side of the plenum chamber and reroute it to the .+front piping right as the air enters. This will make the computer that there is
denser air entering the system and richen it ; I can hook you up with the adaptor part # and the kn filter #. Now do this set up with the 2nd gen intake and plemum
using the better /larger ssytem and you will notice more gain. let me know if you e\want the adator numbers and kn filter, MEssage to chris taylornot all cold ait intake systems are ueless. I have a 93 mitsubishi eclipse2.0 dohcmotor, i added
injens cold air intake kit and dyno test at the frint weheels was 12bhp.
Keep up the faith and do research by calling kn and tellingthem what you are try to accomplisch.b At the ecd of this month autozone is supposed to be able to supply kits to build your own as needed. REmember its you project, do proper research on this and you will come up with a good kit, rx7doctor

Great point, Chris.

BTW, I'm almost sure that a fabbed CAI will NOT get you anywhere NEAR 10 HP, more like 3 or so, so I still don't see the point, even if it slipped my mind that aluminum is so light.

Bringing to the point, I'm not sure if I'd want a bunch of recycled soda cans in my engine bay, as I already have a beer keg ;)

IIRC, between the '84 and '85 years of the -SE, Mazda made a change to the intake because of road grime and salts being sucked into the intake. While the water is probably not a bad thing (other than not combusting, and wasting intake volume), the nastiness that accompanies the water would be the problem. I suppose checking the air filter would have to be done quite a bit more often.

$.02

all i did was throw on an intake adapter and cone filter that i had from my old fc works fine but i can honestly say i didnt feel a difference

I notice a difference when its 10 degrees out, but during the summer its better than stock but not worth it for most people.

spelling errors
 

I wonder if i was awake when i posted my response, i can barely understand what i said,LOL rx7doctor

I just figured it was the beer factor, given the timestamp on the post lol.

:beer:

/rant on

Man, what the hell is up with this forum sometimes? You guys seem to be fighting points that have very little to do with the subject at hand: somebody's FUN project.

Not weighing in on the issue of whether it will net anything - the value of this kind of project is to do something custom to your car and feel good for being able to do it yourself. Whether it results in an ASS-dyno increase or not is immaterial. Badgering the guy that he's wasting money or that it's just a bad idea is just negativity.

Help a guy out and contribute something to his project - or leave him alone and let somebody else help him out.

/rant

Enough of us here have installed CAI systems that it's not wasted effort. I happen to live in the desert, so having air drawn in that's 140F is better than drawing in air that's 180F under my hood. If I can get it down 10 more degrees, I'd do it, because air density is critical to developing good power and running efficiently. If you live in Alaska, it's probably not going to make a difference, but if your car is turbocharged/intercooled, or if you live where it gets REALLY hot - that little bit of difference means something.

Good luck on this project - Mazda certainly thought it was important enough to add a remote air intake on these cars (84/85 SE's) when they left the FACTORY, so I think you should be able to improve on it with some ingenuity.