I have one of the rally bonnets coming my way from HVe. This hood is essentially a modified stock hood, with two air inlets at the nose. These inlets feed into a chamber built into the hood that directs the incoming cold air off to the side and over to where the stock air filter box is.
I'm looking for suggestions anyone may have as to where to take things from here. I want to make some sort of cold-box air intake that will capture the air from this vent, but I'm not sure where to start. What kind of materials should I make this box out of? I plan on heat-wrapping as much of this intake as possible, but how do you effectively wrap a box? Would heat tape work better? And finally, what would be a good way to insulate the intake part of the hood from hot engine area?

I guess it's pretty obvious that I don't know much at the moment on how heat wrapping is applied. Are there adhesives that hold it in place, which would make cutting and applying strips of the wrap for "wrapping" the flat surfaces of the box and hood intake?

 

You can use the normal thermal wrap to wrap a box. Hold it in place with staples if you have to, but do not use glue's or resins. the glue or resin you would use would conduct heat.

What I would reccomend for an airbox, would be 2 layers of heat wrap, with added heat reflecting outter layer. You can use those 'survival" silver heat blankets, and cut it up to fit.

You will also need drain holes in the airbox. Rain water is going to be rammed into that box with the air. 2 1/4" drain plugs at the bottom of the airbox should do the trick. look at the stock airbox...it has them.

Then you want as good of a "seal" between thea airbox and hood as possible. So that you can actually get a 'Ram air" effect at speed. This is best accmomplished by making sure the airbox actually just barely contacts the hood all the way around (use colored chalk around the rim of the airbox), then add 3/8" of foam tape around the rim of the airbox. The foam will compress down and give you the best airseal possible. If you want to go gonzo, you can add a rubberseal beyond the Foam one...but that is harder to fabricate....

 

I forgot. Mount the air filter in the box out of the way of DIRECT air flow. That is the direction/path the water will also be taking. You want your filter to suck up the cold air at low speed, and you want the WHOLE BOX pressurised at high speed. Putting the filter right underneath or in the direct path of the air is just asking for some water to go into your engine.

An AEM bypass would NOT stop this kind of water, as it would only happen at high speed. This would pressurize your intake/intake tube the AEM bypass was in. the Bypass requires VACCCUM to work.

 

Any particular suggestion for the box itself? Metal? Plastic? An old styrofoam beer cooler? wink.gif

 

Plastic is cheap and easy to cut to fit, but a bitch if you cut away too much!

Fiberglass is good, but prone to cracking. Make sure you isolate the fiberglass box from engine vibration with some ruber mounts.

Cheap aluminum boxes are light weight, but conduct heat VERY EASILY, and thusly make a poor choice. If you go with a metal box, consider investing $50 to $100 in getting the metal ceramic coated to prevent heat absorption in addition to the heat wrap/thermal blanket.

 

I'll probably go with plastic...long-term goals are to turbocharge, in which case I really won't need the box anymore, so I'm not looking to sink extravagant amounts of money into this. Depending on how closely this hood vent lines up with the stock air box, I may just try and modify that one! Open up a hole for it to mate to the opening, and convert it into a housing for a cone filter. I'd still need to find a safeguard against direct exposure to water, if I did that, though. Hrm.