Hello, Kinda new to posting here read alot and you guys have great info. Just wanted to know I work at a soil building factory we work with all stainless steel. ANd i just built an intake adapter for the afm i made is bend off behind the head light. My quetion is i want to replace all the plastic pipeing behind the afm, i can make ever peace of it i already took it out and spected it out, i weld there and run the cnc plasma bed. ( so if you need somthing cut let me know up to 3/4 stainless i can cut for you) i wanted to know if it would help, or hurt at all.

 

The metal is great at absorbing engine bay heat. Unless you can get a good source of cold air, I would imagine that it would hurt power more then anything. The stock "accordian" tubing is rough on the inside, but has a wide diameter and the ABS plastic doesn't heat soak like metal does.

 

I was wondering if it would help airflow to smooth out the inside of the plastic piece with some sort of filler?

 

Probably, but good luck finding a fillter that will stay there forever. I'd be fairly worried that a chunk would come out and go into the engine (seen it before with poorly made home-brew intakes).

 

You will definitely want that accordian stuff to stay. If that engine pulls anywhere near the amount of air that i think it pulls, the shape of the tube is neccessary to prevent the damn thing from shattering. If it did not flex, if the ABS became brittle at all, it would shatter and then you would be sucking in all kinds of evilness into the engine...

Accordian == Compressible.

 

pulls amount of air? shatter? That sounds rather extreme to me.

So does the smooth straight-shot flow of a metal TID offset the heat-absorption?

 

I think honestly with engine vibrations alone, especially from starting and stopping the engine, the filler would chunk off. Lets all just agree that it is not a good idea, and there are better ideas.

A good idea, read the archives on the CAI setup. He used metal piping, and for the joints he used that rubber stuff thats used with turbo setups, works great for engine vibration and the airflow was excellent.

 

hmm thanks, i think im giong to go with metal and the rubber connectors im duckting it down to pick up tons of cold air

 

Thanks for the replies guys. One of my roommates has injection molding equipment. I think I'm gonna see about having him help me make something interesting out of plastics.

 

FWIW the top of the engine can torque over as much as 1/2" left & right in enthusiastic driving, so allow enoung flex in your couplings.