TracyRX7

Phase 1 - Route Cold Air Hose

Well I decided I was annoyed with the stock airbox and the somewhat goofy way that it routes air in. I've got an aftermarket front end with a lot of room on the passenger side (since I have a single oil cooler) so I decided to run some ducting down there (foil dryer hose).

For now I've attached the end of the ducting straight up to the grille on the nose piece and I'll probably look at getting a molded plastic piece to fill the entire spot and then funnel the hose to the back of it eventually.

I'm waiting on getting an Apexi Power Intake in the mail right now and when it arrives I'm going to fab up some sort of either shield/box to block hot air from the radiator mixing with the cold air I'm bringing in through the ducting.

To run this ducting I had to remove a couple of pieces from the area round the headlight. If I had a sleek light kit and no more headlight motor this would work even better.

After that I took some time to carefully route the piping down between the fender and the coolant overflow tank to the front. I had to really 'smash' the dryer hosing into a tight oval so it didn't compress the plastic fender and rub the tire (this was probably the most difficult part of routing the hose down there, if you had access to a lift and could remove the tire work under the plastic fender it would go really quickly).

Constructive suggestions/critizism appreciated

Phase 2 - Install Apexi Power Intake (coming this week), I'll update the thread, pictures of the first phase results below...

SVT Squasher

Is that exhaust fan ducting from a stove?

SyderJL

Looks like it'll work out. Good work

Good luck with the shield though, there isn't very much room at all around the Apexi intakes, the heat shield will require a lot of bends.

Justus

adam c

iTrader: (2)

One of the problems with ducting, is that you get more than just air. The screen in front of the opening should keep out some stuff, but it wont keep out everything...... bugs, water, small rocks etc. You may want to consider putting some holes in the ducting where rocks and water will fall out. In addition, you may want to put some screening on the other end of the shield. You dont want to have a rock fly into the duct at high speed, and hit your hood.

TracyRX7

RE: Space around the Apexi, yeah I'm in a wait and see mode (and you're not getting my hopes up ). Worse case is i finish off the ducting on the side there and I'm pushing some cold air into the car.

RE: better screening, good call Adam. I'll look at getting some "window screen" to put behind the grille there in front so big stuff won't get to the engine compartment. With regard to water in the event of a rainy day...I'm not really sure what can be done to ducting to stop some from getting in and up it without blocking airflow? Ideas appreciated...I kinda figured I might just have to cap it off on a rainy day (which shouldn't be too bad since the ambient temps should be lower and the water hitting the hood should help cool the metal down).

Recipe7

very interesting hehe, gl

SyderJL

I wouldn't really worry about rain or foreign objects, thats a steep angle for it to travel and water doesn't really get in there for some reason, I have the GT-C bumper and I drove for an hour and a half in pouring rain and then checked to see how wet my oil cooler on the other side was and it was almost completely dry.
( ^ I am thinking about relocating my intakes down there thats why I did that.)

Good luck and keep us updated!!

Justus

bcty

put the intakes down there instead of running the getto lookin dryer ducting or at least use some PVC pipeing(black) so you can see it and should be better good idea though

wReX

iTrader: (6)

Please post up pics of the heat shield when you get it in. I have the Apexi intakes and am about to take on making a heat shield as well. Thanks!

TracyRX7

I'm not overly concerned with how stuff looks. I don't want the car to scream trash when you see it but performance is 95% of the decision. After the plastic funnel end is made you probably won't even see the ducting anymore without the hood popped and my car will never be a show car under the hood (clean is one thing, polished is another). If you are concerned with the look I suggest getting some weatherproof spraypaint before installing the ducting and painting it.

As far as using some sort of hard piping; there is no feasible way you could route hard piping through that space. By using flexible hosing you can change the shape of the tubing while keeping relatively the same amount of volume (An oval with the same circumference of a circle will have less area than the circle.) It was a really tight fit even with flexible tubing. I considered relocating a bunch of the electrical stuff to the area where the battery was (mine is in the trunk now) to give a wider and maybe better path (as stated earlier a headlight conversion would really help by eliminating the motor in the way). It is dryer hose though and its cheap so I can always revisit that down the road.

Thanks for the comments so far and after the intake is in I'll be sure to follow up as requested with heatshield/box progress.

TracyRX7

Well got the Apexi Power Intake today and installed it. Aside from the instructions being in Japanese and the brackets seeming to pretty much be useless the install was pretty easy. Wow those filters are BIG I'll put up some pictures tomorrow when I can get decent lighting.

For now I terminated the ducting on the fender area behind the headlight motor. It is directing cold air in the general direction of the filters.

As far as a heat shield of sorts or a box i'm going to spend some time pondering it. I'll probably just go with a vented hood to keep the temps down a bit with the ducting and that hopefully keeps it low enough.

Sadly enough like most of the folks here my priorities got shifted a bit when I started it up and drove down to get a tank of gas....oil pressure slowly dropping to 0 at idle From searching through the forums here I'm less worried though since the oil levels check out fine and I don't see any dripping/leaks at all (probably sensor dying; time to go aftermarket, bloody stock crud )

For this ducting to be more effective (have more volume) it would be nice to relocate the coolant overflow tank. Anyone moved it before? Recommendations on where to?

Tomorrow pictures and off to Home Depot and maybe other stores to try and find a funnel to terminate the hose on.

iceman4357

iTrader: (2)

I remember using that hose on my friends accord when i was 16. hehehheh. We used an oil funnel that was large enough to cover the front air grill so that you couldnt see the silver piping. It would look WAY better by doing that.

RX7INSAC

Looks like it might work.