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Custom/DIY True Cold Air Intake

Banshee1

Banshee1

Go Kart Champion
I was quite unsatisfied with my intake setup, the BSH true seal intake, because it rattled like crazy and I could tell it was sucking in hot air from the engine bay. The filter and short tube got really hot as soon as the heat shield heated up. So I discovered through a little investigation that there was a perfect place to stick a tube through right beneath the headlight, and room for a nice big filter behind the drivers side fog light. I bought a 135 degree bend 2' long aluminum intake pipe, with some silicone couplers and bands from siliconeintakes.com. All I had to do was cut the pipe twice and bolt it up the the BSH pipe which I angled down a little.

Now Im sure alot of you will say its a terrible idea because it has no direct air flow and yada yada but when I touched the filter immediately after a few hard test runs it was completely cool to the touch. Like ambient temp 75 degrees cool. MUCH cooler than the filter was in the engine bay even with the heatshield. To me it feels faster, just has a little more edge to the pull! It does not rattle or make an of the annoying noises it did before, sounds much better. Not only does the filter feel cooler but so does the original BSH short pipe. Im was planning on dremeling out the fog light grille honeycomb but didnt get to it tonight. Maybe soon.

Here are some pics of my work. Its still a test fit as I will be buying better couplers and coating everything black with some sort of insulation, maybe plastidip, to make it look clean and as OEM as possible.








Sorry for the shitty iPhone flash pics!
 
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gre_v1

Passed Driver's Ed
Interesting idea! I have done a few DIY intakes on older cars and they worked just as well, if not better than spending $300+ on a name brand one.
 
Banshee1

Banshee1

Go Kart Champion
actually, like I said above, the filter was significantly cooler in this location.
also, some air does flow through the fog grill (very little) and a good bit through the front grille.

and haha but I wouldnt ever drive my car through that much water regardless.
 
DRedman451

DRedman451

Go Kart Champion
^you gotta drive through a serious puddle to hydro lock...i would say most...definitely not all...people with cai's know they shouldn't drive through a pond haha

I had a cai on my rabbit for 2 years without issue
 
Uberryan

Uberryan

Banned
if the filter is sitting behind the headlight, or just below it, at about top-center level grill area, then there's no worry of hydrolock, as in combination with the underplate, no water is going to splash that high.

You would literally need to drive through 1.5-2ft of water, and no one would do that with a stock intake, let alone an aftermarket intake, knowingly. I don't think anyone would chance 2ft of water at all in most "cars." A truck wouldn't obviously mind it too much.

Hydrolock simply isn't an issue with this sort of setup. Eurojet has a similar setup being released soon.
 
DRedman451

DRedman451

Go Kart Champion
you really should have logged IAT before and after at as close an ambient temperature as you could get...but so much for testing

and without open fog grilles I cannot see any chance of there being cooler air behind your heat exchangers and there are air damns to send air across them and not around
 
fatty@golfmk6.com

fatty@golfmk6.com

Go Kart Champion
yeah not too sure how much air you get from down there. sure it's not as hot... but it might not suck in as much air so it sorta cancels out
 
Stocktastic1

Stocktastic1

Go Kart Champion
You do realize the stock intake setup utilizes a ramair scoop right?

Air straight from the scoop in the grille should be significantly cooler and definitely more plentiful than the location of this filter.
 
Banshee1

Banshee1

Go Kart Champion
I will be dremeling out the honey comb fog grille on the drivers side. I would love to log IATs but I don't have VCDS right now. When I have access to it I for sure will, I really don't feel like air flow is an issue, when the car is moving there's a decent amount of holes through which air can flow to the filter.
 
chinqutie

chinqutie

Go Kart Champion
interested to see how it does on dyno (if ever it's relevant) ..
 
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gregsju29

Go Kart Champion
^^^^ are you 100% sure about that? I'm not an expert at all, but i would think that the farther away from the engine you can be, the cooler it would be. Sure the stock setup is near the front grill, but it still has to mix with hot engine air. I'm not sure the DIY CAI is the best setup, but I would think that it should pull colder air. My biggest issue is that pipe being bent like that is not good. The less bends the better for the airflow. You are really messing with the flow of air every time you bend the pipe, and that's a significant bend. That's why I like the carbonio setup, and even modshack doesn't have any bends.
 
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aw6141

Go Kart Champion
Banshee said:
actually, like I said above, the filter was significantly cooler in this location.
also, some air does flow through the fog grill (very little) and a good bit through the front grille.

and haha but I wouldnt ever drive my car through that much water regardless.
Click to expand...

hopefully you wont be in south tampa when it rains with that intake lol.
 
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