Its been awhile since I've posted but I have been in the process of getting my Alpine Turbo kit installed in working on my 2003 Tib. All that is left is to have the Unichip installed and tuned.
My question is before I took it in to have some intercooler pipes fabricated I had the intake to the turbo routed through the driver's side fender to take in fresh air. When I picked up the car yesterday the shop re-routed my turbo intake to the engine compartment. Does this make sense? Wouldn't it be better to have fresh air instead of nice warm/hot engine compartment air?

 

Unless they were worried about water getting in....but you'd have to take the car swimming to get enough water to mess things up I would think.

 

I'd say what a load of horse ****

you want the coolest intake air possible.
the engine bay isnt going to have the coolest air.

its simple, theres no two ways about it.

[ March 07, 2003, 12:31 AM: Message edited by: bryfx ]

 

go check out the air intake of my own turbo lantra in the showroom section of www.hyundaiperformance.com i think you will like what i have done

 

Hey buddy, turbos can spin up to 150,000 rpms creating a lot of friction when compressing air which creates A LOT of heat so if it is sucking in air thats slightly cooler, it's going to heat up from the compression. It's really not the location of the air filter thats important, it's the effeciency of the INTERCOOLER thats important. Thats why 1st Gen Tib is correct as in it doesn't really matter that much.
Just think about it a little bit... it's simple, there's no two ways about it. tongue.gif

 

I'd say that it's more important to do some heat wrapping on your charge piping, exhaust manifold, downpipe, and turbo then to worry about your air filter. You can increase the efficiency of your turbo a LOT and keep the heat under the hood down to a min. It may not look as pretty but you'll get a lot better spool up on the turbo and maybe a couple horse power out of it mainly because the charge air is cooler.

 

the temperature rise from the air being compressed is added
ontop of your intake air temperature

so you want it as cold as possible from the beginning

 

Thanks for the replies everyone!!! I had to take the car back to the speed shop because the messed up the spacer plate install and it was leaking antifreeze...more updates come later.

 

putting the filter in the fender well isn't a bad idea, but it's not "perfectly" safe. the only safe way to intake cool air, or to cool the intake charge, is via an intercooler. that's why there are intercoolers. you don't need to worry about the location of the filter...just as long as it's not like right by the turbo or manifold.

:edit:
bry, very few things, almost nothing, in our world works on linear equations. i'm sure that when compressing air, the intake air temp isn't just "added" to the heat increase generated by compression.

[ March 08, 2003, 09:48 AM: Message edited by: turbulence ]