TheTroyness
I changed a tire once...
- Location
- Arkansas
So here's a little story for you. I'm a college student. Right now I'm on winter break, so I have a lot of down time (I work for my University, so I'm also on a vacation from my job pretty much). Well, at the start of the break, I went hunting for a boost leak, as well as zeroed in on the source to my mysterious cylinder 4 misfire. Got my answers, and ordered parts.
Now I've got down time again while the parts come in. This is a problem. So I decided to fabricate something that I've been kinda wanting to do for some time. You see, I have a cold air intake from ABD Racing. Well, I had been running the hideous closed stock fog grilles. Ugly, but they were protecting my CAI from getting hit with a bunch of water when driving in or after rain. I don't want my turbo to try sucking air through my wet cotton filter, because that will destroy it. That's why K&N says not to use forced air flow to dry their filters when cleaning them.
At any rate, I recently got some open fogs, and thus made my filter vulnerable to the evil elements! So I decided to make a shield for my filter to protect it from incoming water. And that's what this thread is about.
I decided I could use one of two designs. I could mount the shield somewhere on the car between the fogs and the filter, or I could mount the shield on the filter itself. To make things easy, I decided to mount it on the filter. I thought up a few designs, and then decided to look at the parts involved.
I took off my bumper and stuff and checked out the area where the filter is. Looked at space constraints and all those fun things. Then I took off the filter to measure it. Then I noticed this could be a lot easier than I had imagined. The filter has grooves on the top and bottom of it in the rubber. These grooves were deep enough for metal to bite into without having to modify the filter or damage anything. Lucky me!
So the plan was to make a metal shield that would clip onto the filter using those grooves. Just in case that wouldn't hold it tight enough, I included some extra space on the bottom that I cold put a screw through and into the rubber part of the filter to hold it in place. That ended up being completely unnecessary.
Because of the support right next to the filter, I had to make the housing a shell shape. That put the shield close enough to the filter to clear the support, but as more space was available around the filter, I could give more clearance between the shield and the filter to avoid air flow restriction.
Now for the pictures!
I started taking pictures late, but oh well. By the time I took the first picture, I had already cut out the top and bottom pieces and the side wall. Here is a picture of the pieces. The side wall was half way bent into shape. This was the second side wall I made because the first one was less than a centimeter too short! :mad0259:
Here I have all the pieces set together around the air filter. This is how the final product will look.
Next, I started to JB Weld things together. Before "welding", I prepped the surfaces with acetone. Then I "welded" the lip on the top piece...
If anyone wants to do this themselves, make a note that if you use JB Weld, you can add acetone to your weld stuff to thin it prior to application. I didn't thin mine. It was easier to work with it thick (that's what she said :thumbsup. I just smeared it in with a beheaded q-tip and smoother it out with my finger.
Prior to applying JB, I super glued pieces together to hold them in place while the JB cured. Super glue holds in a few moments, while JB holds in several hours (sets in 4-6, cures in 24).
Bottom piece welded to side wall, while the bottom lip is sitting in place. The lip was warped because I used tin snips (or metal shears, or whatever you want to call them), which bent the metal a fair amount. But I didn't care because the super glue would fix that.
Next to get glued into position was the top piece.
Now the top and bottom pieces are both "welded" in place, as well as their respective lips. <-- That sounds strange. Almost creepy... Oh well.
View of the completed top side...
View of the completed bottom side...
Filter put in place. This was a huge pain. Took a lot of wiggling and pushing and what not. It went in, though. And it is on there really good. No need for any extra supports or fixtures or anything. Not looking forward to taking that off to wash the filter, though. Which needs to be done soon...
Installed on the car... Not a whole lot of clearance on the left side.
Here's some perspective.
The end.
In before: "restricting air flow"; "just get a ram air intake"; "that won't work"; "needz moar low!".
Now I've got down time again while the parts come in. This is a problem. So I decided to fabricate something that I've been kinda wanting to do for some time. You see, I have a cold air intake from ABD Racing. Well, I had been running the hideous closed stock fog grilles. Ugly, but they were protecting my CAI from getting hit with a bunch of water when driving in or after rain. I don't want my turbo to try sucking air through my wet cotton filter, because that will destroy it. That's why K&N says not to use forced air flow to dry their filters when cleaning them.
At any rate, I recently got some open fogs, and thus made my filter vulnerable to the evil elements! So I decided to make a shield for my filter to protect it from incoming water. And that's what this thread is about.
I decided I could use one of two designs. I could mount the shield somewhere on the car between the fogs and the filter, or I could mount the shield on the filter itself. To make things easy, I decided to mount it on the filter. I thought up a few designs, and then decided to look at the parts involved.
I took off my bumper and stuff and checked out the area where the filter is. Looked at space constraints and all those fun things. Then I took off the filter to measure it. Then I noticed this could be a lot easier than I had imagined. The filter has grooves on the top and bottom of it in the rubber. These grooves were deep enough for metal to bite into without having to modify the filter or damage anything. Lucky me!
So the plan was to make a metal shield that would clip onto the filter using those grooves. Just in case that wouldn't hold it tight enough, I included some extra space on the bottom that I cold put a screw through and into the rubber part of the filter to hold it in place. That ended up being completely unnecessary.
Because of the support right next to the filter, I had to make the housing a shell shape. That put the shield close enough to the filter to clear the support, but as more space was available around the filter, I could give more clearance between the shield and the filter to avoid air flow restriction.
Now for the pictures!
I started taking pictures late, but oh well. By the time I took the first picture, I had already cut out the top and bottom pieces and the side wall. Here is a picture of the pieces. The side wall was half way bent into shape. This was the second side wall I made because the first one was less than a centimeter too short! :mad0259:
Here I have all the pieces set together around the air filter. This is how the final product will look.
Next, I started to JB Weld things together. Before "welding", I prepped the surfaces with acetone. Then I "welded" the lip on the top piece...
If anyone wants to do this themselves, make a note that if you use JB Weld, you can add acetone to your weld stuff to thin it prior to application. I didn't thin mine. It was easier to work with it thick (that's what she said :thumbsup. I just smeared it in with a beheaded q-tip and smoother it out with my finger.
Prior to applying JB, I super glued pieces together to hold them in place while the JB cured. Super glue holds in a few moments, while JB holds in several hours (sets in 4-6, cures in 24).
Bottom piece welded to side wall, while the bottom lip is sitting in place. The lip was warped because I used tin snips (or metal shears, or whatever you want to call them), which bent the metal a fair amount. But I didn't care because the super glue would fix that.
Next to get glued into position was the top piece.
Now the top and bottom pieces are both "welded" in place, as well as their respective lips. <-- That sounds strange. Almost creepy... Oh well.
View of the completed top side...
View of the completed bottom side...
Filter put in place. This was a huge pain. Took a lot of wiggling and pushing and what not. It went in, though. And it is on there really good. No need for any extra supports or fixtures or anything. Not looking forward to taking that off to wash the filter, though. Which needs to be done soon...
Installed on the car... Not a whole lot of clearance on the left side.
Here's some perspective.
The end.
In before: "restricting air flow"; "just get a ram air intake"; "that won't work"; "needz moar low!".
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