Searched and haven't found a thread on the AE92 forum similar to this so I'll make my own. These mods aim to reduce acceleration hesitation and increase the efficiency of the intake system and get some noticeable gains.
If you don't mind doing a little DIY, I did a ducting mod that works well with the intake whether it be with the stock air box or SRI in the AE92. So the story goes that I found the stock intake system to be pretty restrictive in the way it takes in air. The stock system is laid out as: intake manifold->air box->snorkel. The primary way it intakes air with the stock air box is through the snorkel. The snorkel intakes air from behind the headlight and a hole that goes somewhere underneath the car. The tip of the snorkel that intakes air behind the headlight is restrictive because of the small gap between the headlight and the bumper (it intakes some air but very little). So the solution to this problem is to use a duct to force more air into the restrictive portion of the snorkel to be used for intake. My duct takes in air from the front in the bumper section (works to bring in a bunch of cold air
) It's not my original idea because its been around for a long time. It's cheap but very effective.
Here are some pictures:
Air is taken in from the front and duct is held by zip ties.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image.
After adding a duct, I noticed better pickup in acceleration and overall ability to maintain speed. Since I have an auto and no tach to look at, gains were noticeable after 25mph and a big jump around 35mph (air floods in faster with more speed). I have no idea how much HP or torque was gained but it was noticeable.
results:
-ability to go up steep hills at 40mph without using much throttle.
-quick acceleration to 70MPH on the freeway.
-increase in MPG in majority residential but some freeway:
before: 220 miles on 9 gallons = 24.4MPG
after: 250 miles on 9 gallons = 27.8 MPG
price: about $9.78 for the ducting you can find at a home improvement store (I got mines from Home Depot).
__________________________________________________ __________
A SRI that takes in colder air eh?
(combined with the ducting of course)
A month later I decided to get an SRI to see if I can also improve low end pickup and acceleration. I ended up ordering an Ebay SRI for around $35. I decided to keep the snorkel because it was effective in bringing in much needed air from the outside (better to have some outside intake air than to have all warm engine intake air). I was honestly surprised by the quality of the cone filter itself although the quality of the piping wasn't the best but it'll work. After driving around a bit with the SRI I noticed that acceleration in the low end was decent but something was lacking. After the initial drive, I decided to pop the hood up and check the intake piping and found that it was pretty hot to the touch (noticeably hotter than the stock air box ever got, probably because of difference in materials ie, metal vs plastic). I decided I needed to do some modifications to the short ram setup to decrease the warming of the intake piping and its subsequent warming of intake air.
I decided to build a heat shield out of metal and use some thermal insulation wrapping to shield it from the warm engine bay. With a quick trip to Home Depot I found some sheet metal with the perfect size (8x11 I believe) and some thermal insulation wrap for about $10.89 total. I got to work and wrapped my whole intake piping with insulation material and on one side of my make-shift heat shield (engine side of the heat shield is unwrapped so it can reflect heat back, intake side is insulated from the engine side so heat doesn't transgress through).
With the heat shield and wrapping done, I used my remaining air ducting material I had left over to mate it to the end of the snorkel (where it used to mate to the stock air box) open top portion of the cone filter.
Here's some pictures:
price: $10.89 for heat shield and thermal wrap (only had 30ft roll available for $9.60), $35 for SRI = $45.89.
results with SRI w/ducting:
-louder
-better low end pickup and acceleration
-ducting results remain
-can accelerate to 80MPH quickly with little effort
results with thermal wrapping and heat shield to SRI:
-more consistent pickup and acceleration on the low end.
-overall lower intake piping temperature (does not get warm)
Note: moisture isn't an issue with with the ducting, drove through heavy rain with puddles and everything and it's good and dry.
Better Air Intaking.
Linear Mode
