Making a cold/ram air intake for my ITBs
 

Well its about time that I got started on this

As the title states, its a cold/ram air box for my ITB's. Since is a DCOE type manifold that it sits on, its getting all the air from ontop of the engine bay right now which is pretty hot.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...2&d=1244764650

All the white parts are what's going to get bolted hence the 1/8" thickness for a bit more beefed up part that won't flex as easily. All the red parts are what make up all the sheet metal that is the main contrustion of the box. The green part is just a new throttle cable holder as oppose to the mickey mouse one that I made a while back but just doesn't look good. (All parts will be laser cut for best accuracy)

The whole intake will be 3 pieces once all welded up:

1) The plate that bolts inbetween the ITB, and the air horns,
2) The center section that covers pretty much just the air horns,
3) The end section where the 4" cold/ram air tube will be bolted up to.

Now I could of made the whole thing out of only 2 pieces, but I wanted to be able to play around with different plenum volumes so I figured this is going to most likely be the easiest way to do it.

On the end section there, there will be about a 1" long 4" wide tube welded on there to bolt on flexible tubing. Also the angle that the opening is set at is a bit more biased to the rear rotor (due to the fact that the front will already have the shortest distance and this should balance it out a bit.)

Once I have all the pieces welded up, they will be sent out to get nickel coated. I was going to do zinc at first but after talking with the owner of the plating place, its not going to with stand too much abuse (bolting and unbolting) and will rust easier than nickel. I might also get them to polish up the whole piece but we'll see about that because I might just buy of DEI's reflect-a-gold tape and put it on there to provide better heat reflection.

http://rideyourpimp.com/blog/wp-cont...r_geargold.jpg

I was hoping to skip all those step and just do it out of stainless, but after finding out its going to cost me about 200$ more for the stainless, I figured I'd look at other options. The plating will only be about 40-50$ (including polishing). The laser cut parts will be about 150$, plus another 50$ or so for the tape. About a 250$ manifold. Not the cheapest, but should be effective.

well here's the laser cut pieces. Also the first laser cut quote was not right, they did it using inches and not cm so the actual price is closer to 60$US. Also I ordered up some of that reflect a gold (1.5"x15'). Should have the box welded up tomorrow.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...5&d=1245096982

any pics of it finished???

not really finished ... just all welded up, had a bit of an issue fitting it on, stupid aluminum chunk sticking out of the housings hits it. stupid chunks sitting there for nothing anyways :icon_no2:

but here's the pictures:

looks good! what kind of ducting are you using?

was going to just use a 4" aluminum drier vent hose, and was going to hook it up at the front bumper. But look like I have to perhaps make 2 x 4" inlets and make the volume of the whole thing bigger.

whats your reason for this?

well its an NA car, so the more volume the less it has to work hard on sucking the air in through a long hose. So easier access for the engine and would breathe easier. When Paul Yaw did this setup:

http://www.yawpower.com/dec2004.html

He gained 22hp from the previous intake style switching to this. Quite a big gain i'd say. I might do a dyno comparison of one versus 2 later on but we'll get to that later.

any updates?

+1 updates

no updates yet .... I'm about 1600 miles away from home, drove my rx7 to Florida!

Well a few updates:

I decided to make a new one, because the other one I think I made a bit too thin and deformed the metal a bit for the gasket to sit on. But either way this one is already all welded up, and I have also sent it out for electroless nickel plating. Let me know how you like it!

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1264620065

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1264620065

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1264620065

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1264620065

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1264620065

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1264620065

looks good! what is the cubic feet of the box?

its not as big as I'd like it to be. Its about 170 cubic inches. so about .1 cubic feet I guess.

Nice! Whos welder did you use? ;)

UWO's welder lol. I asked nicely and they said yes. My times and your times just kept on conflicting too much. I have the first muffler almost done, I'll get it done today and hopefully get started on the second one.

Here's me welding there chassis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QLnIzakFXQ

Got there whole chassis welded up in about 48 working hours. I spanned it over 5 work nights. I love how I can work that pedal with my knee, and my elbow. The elbow isn't on that video, but trying to press down with your elbow, and trying to keep a steady hand welding all in one arm, not the easiest thing I tell you.

I built two chassis for the lotus super seven replicas. Instead of using my elbow or knee to start the arc, i used a scratch start TIG. comes in handy wehn its hard to use a pedal... you shoudl try it out...

nice air box, but what doies it weigh? why not aluminum?

I've used scratch machines before, don't really like them for work like this. We have tubing on there that is about .03" thick and i like to have as much control as possible. Tomorrow I'm going to be welding up some .02" stainless for them also. They don't make my life easy that's for sure.

About doing it out of aluminum, I would of had to make it a bit bigger and I'm already tight enough on space right now.

Yeah, I have been difficult to get ahold of lately.

What kind of welder does UWO have. Looks like a Syncrowave?

You're not a real man until you are controlling the pedal with your cheek, holding the torch with one hand, balancing with the other, and someone else is adding filler. :D

Scratch start or lift arc? I quite like lift-arc and wish my welder supported it.

It's a synchrowave 180, I should get them to invest in a thumb control torch.

That thing is beautiful. I wish I had those fabrication skills, my whole build would be one-off set up.

very clean, that looks great.

Thanks for the compliments!

Weight?