Custom Air Intake / Resonator Removal

I used some 3" PVC tubing I bought at Lowes for about $5. That's an adjustable 3" coupler also bought at Lowes for $4. 1 foot of 1/2 ID rubber hose was used for the breather hose. Used a 1/2" barb pipe fitting that I drilled into the PVC tubing. Painted the PVC, applied a decal, and overlayed some black flexible tubing over the rubber hose for aesthetics. The K&N E1009 filter was purchased at AAS for about $37 (on sale). That's about it..

Crunching the numbers tonight on ScanXL with my bluetooth OBD2 reader, I noticed some significant differences with the installation of my airbox.

First, with the stock airbox in place, the lowest air intake temp I charted was 100*F. This was when I was maintaining a speed of about 65mph. The highest was about 155*F when I idled for about 5 minutes at normal operating temp. The ambient temp at the time of this study was about 89*F with very high humidity.

After the first run, I removed the airbox and secured the filter in place with some duct tape. I did not use any shielding next to filter. On the road I went for my second run. My results were as follows. 89*F on the low end cruising around 65MPH. And 180*F while idling for about 5 minutes at operating temp.

What I can deduct from the results is that the airbox definitely hampers airflow. At best, intake temps were about 10 degrees warmer when the airbox was on. But when idling for a prolonged amount of time, the inherent shielding on the airbox worked against engine heat.

On the flip side, having the airbox removed produced cooler air at cruising speed. But stationary, the air intake temps got ridiculously high. The AIT dropped much quicker upon acceleration when the airbox was off. However, it also rose quicker when coming to a stop.

It's obvious that shielding does work. My next mod would have to incorporate some type of shielding with an external air flow.