DIY intake for temporary NA operation
 

I am swapping in a rebuilt/fresh 96 1.8 into my 91 and want to run it naturally aspirated for the break in period and to get my Megasquirt tuned and figuired out. I have a BEGI intercooler kit with all the intercooler pluming and intercooler, but I only want to run a simple NA intake for now, till I install the MSM turbo setup.
I do not need any of the AFM or MAF sensors. I will have to mount the Intake Air Temp sensor somewhere though.

Has anyone pulled off something cheap and easy like this? I would love to make my own nice cold air intake, but am not willing to spend $80 in alu tubing and connectors just for a temporary air cleaner.

I would love to just stick a filter on the throttle body but I do not have room for that with 50mm rad and coolant reroute on cold side.

You don't have the stock intake? thats what I'd run. why bother with anything else if you're going to change it soon anyway?

I ran the cold pipe off the my intercooler setup. It had the bung for IAT and I just popped a filter on it.

I have a 90 degree silicon elbow from the throttle body to a short pipe with filter on it. IAT is in the elbow 2 inches from the TB. About as simple as you can get if you don't have the oem intake anymore

I thought about that when I stuck the throttle body pipe on there. I just have to find a filter that would fit in between the my 50mm radiator and fans and the engine. I would use the 1.8 inate but I do not have the aircleaner for it.Just everything up to the MAF.
How bad does your low/mid range suck with such a short intake path.

My daily driver had a PVC intake on it when I picked-it up.

Yeah I just run my airfilter on the intercooler pipe. Zero top end but it's easy. If I had room to put the filter on or over by the throttle body I'd do that.

http://www.inoneear.com/outtheother/...nterintake.jpg

and the exhaust is wwaayy too loud/drone-y so I jam this in the tail pipe with some steel wool.
http://www.inoneear.com/outtheother/...terexhaust.jpg

I thought your heater hose was connected to your brake booster.. Had to look at that way too long to figure it out.. lol

I was going to use only the first intercooler pipe off the throttle body, not all the intercooler piping. I am having a hard time finding a 2" cone filter, well for less than $40 a peice. I will take a picture later.

haha yeah me too and I know how it's routed. My turbocoolant passage runs in line with the heater core so that's why it's looped like that in the pic.

I have 150+ Nm at the wheels between 4300 and 6300 rpm. Lowest tq is 135 or somehting at <3000 rpm.

I had a dip in both power and torque between 3000 and 3300 rpm, but that was later tuned out with cams.

With my MegaSquirted, non-FI 1.6 I'm running a stock 1.8 air box with a piece of pipe epoxied in where the MAF used to be, and a IAT bung welded onto the pipe.

Power is significantly better than the AFM set-up above 5000RPM (never dynoed, but very tangible). It sounds like a cone filter but with none of the stupid crap that comes along with actually having a cone filter (ie: leaves, water, heat soak).

Total investment was about $20. It kind of sounds like that might be too high budget for you though.

Here are some pictures of the two setups I am considering. I can either use the first piece of intercooler piping coming off the TB turned down with a small cone filter hanging below (its rather tight in there once the sway bar and rad fans go in). The other option is to use the 1.8 intake tubing as shown. I do not have the 1.8 airbox any longer but I can get a cone filter to work on the airbox end.
The biggest issue for me is that I will have to route my coolant reroute differently for each. When I use the intercooler ppipe off the TB I can only run the coolant hose as show, over the TPS and in between the intake mani and head. Due to the proximity of the TB to the upper radiator hose connection I cannot make the coolant hose run any other way without severely squishing the rad hose.
Now when I use the factory 1.8 intake I can only run the coolant hose as shown, underneath the Tb and around the intake. This route would have to be changed once I do get the turbo in, which is my original motive for trying to use the intecooler piping and cone filter. I have not found any pictures of people routing the coolant hoses off the back of the head in either of the ways shown. Found one similar to my over the TPS alternative.

This might lead me to just install the whole intercooler setup and piping with a filter on the end as TurboTim shows. I bet that has to be one restrictive NA intake though!

I had mine like this for awhile, with the IAT zip tied to the opposite side of the filter. After dealing with crazy heat soak issues, I added a ~2 foot pipe between the elbow and air filter, then installed the IAT sensor into the opposite side of the pipe. Sadly, that pipe was SS, and I still suffered from mild heat soak.

Attachment 192787

Plenty of options to route the plumbing, as far as the sensor goes. Swap in the stock temp sensor and zip tie it to the filter.
Attachment 192784
(this pic is back from when i first installed my turbo kit)
You see the smaller filter zip tied to the main air filter? My stock sensor is in that filter, I had the small filter in my tool box just sitting there so I used it just to keep the sensor somewhat clean.

How does that relate to naturally aspirated intake plumbing?

This thread is very relevant to my interests. So in general you guys have a higher top end but shitty midrange from really short intake setups?

Where do you guys get this tubing/couplers/etc? I've never had any clue where to buy this stuff.

I'm not sure about exact results, but I could tune my intake if I wanted to by using a longer/shorter pipe. I have heard that simply ditching the stock resonator will cause a torque dip around 4k RPMs.


www.siliconeintakes.com is awesome.

Do want.
Good to know, is it like an "Oh shi-...where did my power go?", or is it a barely noticable loss?
And anyone know off the top of their head what diameter tube to get for this, and if a different diameter is required for different year TBs?

The lack of midrange is noticeable enough to feel the extra pull at higher rpms.. slow is slow either way..