A Work In Progress; demonstration of my personal obsession with getting the most performance out of the least money without sacrificing durability.
This Car was purchased for $500 with no motor, dynomax exhaust, DC Sport 4-2-1 Headers and a slightly worn MOMO steering wheel. It is a fairly rare 1993 Acura Integra LS-Special Edition. I Immediately dropped an 8200RPM screamer from the fastest version of the car from Japan. The concept opbjective was harness existing drag to make a street car go faster, for as little money as possible.
So here it is... right in front of my way oversized subaru outback radiator; in the most drag intensive part of the car. When I heard people referring to a cone shaped filter sitting in stagnant, mildly breezy compartments at best, I simply disagreed with their use of the term. So I decided to make something that would actually RAM the air; cutting it; scooping it up into an air tight lung where the forward motion of the car would force it to compress and have nowhere to go but into the motor.
The initial inlet is 6.5" wide by 4.75" tall; smoothly tapering to a 4" upward curving hose lined with aluminum to reduce resistance. This hose attatches to a specially cut PVC elbow which prevents any water from forcing its way up the sides should the wind be strong enough to push it. Then, after a breif segment of 3" PVC pipe it tapers into the 3.5" by 2.5" factory air hose and into the cold air box which was cut as far back as possible to maximize flow volume.
Once inside what used to be a simple factory cold air box the air is cut into three and vectored upwards into the K&N air filter. Without this crucial step the gusting cold air would stagnate and rely on pressure alone to move it though the air filter. This allows for the momentup of the air to curve its way up rapidly through the filter at a more even rate. Otherwise the only flow of such density would be occuring at the rear of the box making somewhat of a bottleneck of the filter itself. Also, I considered the stock resonator box to be something worth keeping for low end power, as well as a failsafe way to collect any renegade moisture without loosing ram-air pressure.
Now, considering the fact that lengthening the stock air hose, no matter how much more open the end is, can cause significant air restriction. So to let the motor breathe easier at low to no speed without sacrificing any of that painstakingly gained ram-air pressure... The stock EGR system that was removed had a very conveniently positioned inlet; just ontop of the air filter. So I got a 3" V8 style performance breather, bored out the rubber to make the inlet as wide as possible and used an old radiator hose to attatch it, as well as some more aluminum tape to make sure it would stay sealed and in place, and later on, black duct tape to make it less conspicuous.
So to slove the remaining dilemma and seal the secondary breather off so that the pressure from the ram air would reach the engine. At first i used wax paper for a sail, reinforced with a little bit of aluminum tape thinking: this ram air coudlnt me making THAT much pressure. Then after every time I took the car up to speed it would collapse from the pressure, into the egr inlet, like it was being sucked right out of the box. 7 Reinfocement attempts later what I have is a duct tape reinforced flap(I think that one little peice of wax paper is in there somewhere, but only acting as the hinge by now) with what amounts to a low-drag sail made out of duct-, covered in aluminum- tape with a silicone clearcoat ontop.
When the wind comes up through the K&N air filter, the sail is lifted. Once the seal is actually made on the egr inlet, the sail is shaped such that it is not only completely out of the line of air molecule fire, but it actually smooths out the top of the cold air box preventing stagnant air pockets from building up and causing drag. After this i suppose those tornado commercials got to my head because i began thinking of a way for the shape of my cold air box to be ever so slightly modified so that that last stretch to the intake manifold could have some high flow, high pressure and turblulently spinning air charging its way into the throttle body. After about 3 good hours of meditation i realized all i needed was one little peice of plastic, and one of the extra pvc pieces I had worked just wonderfully.
Now then... the next issue to adress would be: what happens when there is positive pressire in the intake hose and your Crankcase is trying to breathe? Well I could go the normal route and put two little crappy breathers on each end, but that would not only waste burnable oil vapour, but it would also cause me to loose more ram-air pressure than I need to. All of the Automobile industry doesnt make the part that i had in mind as a solution to this problem. But what youre looking at there... Is a Harley Davidson dual inlet performance breather. I did some mild testing before I installed it and concluded that if there was vaccum on one side, none of the oil vapour would escape through the fitler medium instead it would be sucked into the airhose where it belongs... But once the psi goes up and cuts off the intake side, the crankcase can still freely vent through the filter medium. This slight increase in pressure within the breather itself, along with a greater distance from it to the hose than the crankcase, will prevent much ram air pressure from being wasted. could there be a better compromise for 18$?
So there it is... my fine example of "all GO no show". I simply love the looks on car guys' faces when I lift the hood and they see things theyve never even seen or heard of before.. think it looks like crap, then see me break away to 120 at half throttle... After having driven 4 different integras(: my old '88ls, a '92 totally built for drag, and my ex's '96gsr), a 2000 accord v6 an '04 civic, and a '92 300zxSE (all mine)... I can say with absolutel certaintly that not only is this the fastest car of them all, but I can guarantee that a similar modification to any integra with a VTEC in it is certainly worth the total of 50$ I spent on the whole thing... Just takes a little time and imagination
The moral of the story is: I should stick to building computer systems... heh.. no actually... its simple: You dont have to pay alot to get high performance, you just have to know what to buy and where to get it cheap without sacrificing performance or durability.
C-YA-IN-MY-REARVIEW!
