Different intakes

[blue30]

Hiya all, it's too frikkin cold and nasty to be working on cars at the mo so I'm thinking about them instead!!

When I first finished the M50 swap I had a halfords special cone filter straight onto the MAF, which worked, but...

A little while ago I found another random bit of old intake piping and put it inbetween the cone and the MAF, so the cone was maybe 6 inches away from it then and much closer to the back of the headlights.

This was a GOOD thing, a) it sounds much better - deeper and more 'rorty' if that makes sense. b) The engine feels noticably smoother and more torquey at low/mid RPM. Can't feel any difference at the top end.

So knowing now what a difference it can make, has anyone else swapped about between different intakes, and what effect did it have? What did you think was best?

Cheers
Neil

[Mikey_Boy]

Hi there - always a good thing to get a cone filter a little way from the MAF as they can be quite sensitive to turbulent flow from the filter itself. A lot of effort goes into a production car airbox to 'smooth' the airflow - the large area paper filter normally takes care of this, although of course this normally isn't the best for ultimate airflow and therefore power!

Naturally having cold air to the filter is always going to be a good thing as it's denser than warm air - have a look on some of the other threads on here for some nice solutions to the problem...!

In my experience, BMC filters fare pretty well and are also well designed - I use one of their 'CDA' airboxes on my M20 with MAF conversion and that works pretty well - others on here have used M30 airboxes to good effect and E36 (?) airboxes as well on M5x's...

Hope that helps to start the debate!
Cheers,
Mikey_Boy

[DanThe]

E36 airbox everytime, the intake is pretty huge and sits right behind the headlights, I saw up to 10°C cooler air intake temps when changing to this from an M30 airbox

[e30-EVN]

What if you have an abs unit dan? How do you get around this problem? Is there an airbox that can fit?

[DanThe]

I would move the pump, the M30 box is a tight fit with ABS, but its not as good

[e30-EVN]

Oh right, so an m30 box will fit with the abs unit?
Also what are you thoughts on ram air? Looking at 1 called "viper induction", inclosed airfilter with cold air feed ect....

[Jozi]

I would move the pump, the M30 box is a tight fit with ABS, but its not as good

What I might endup doing for my conversion. I have pics on my own PC of what one of the tuning houses did with one of their models. It was prob Dan that pointed me towards the projects pics on here, was a white m3 is all I remember

[monkey]

i found the m30 air box a tight fit too .

[blue30]

I think the airbox to fit the non-vanos MAF's is different, I had a look at one once and it didn't look like it was going to even be close to fitting. Maybe I should just buy one and *make* it fit!

Don't suppose you've got any Dan?

I've still got a header tank in the normal place on mine too which it looks like I might have to junk...

[DanThe]

Ive got an M30 box if anybody needs one

Theo's Hartge M3 has the ABS pump relocated -

Some pics from his build thread

[hongkongfuey]

i have a bmc style carbon air box , (cone filter in a carbon tube) no abs and the cold air feed to the brake duct seams to work well