So while changing my oil yesterday, a thought occured to me. A new intake would be nice to my car but is it really worth $200+ to buy one?

While looking at the stock intake I formulated a hypothesis. If you were to simply cut the plastic intake off at the section just after the filter housing, you could put a cone filter at the end of it and in essence have created your own short ram intake.

For the visual, I present a picture of my engine bay...totally stock




And here I have photoshopped in a yellow line indicating where the cut could be made.




Now is this a classy and fancy looking setup? No.
Is it just as functional as an aftermarket SRI? Seems like it would be.

At the very least it would generate the sound that people are looking for and already have all the sensors in perfect working order. And you cant beat the price!

So does this idea have any promise? Are there flaws that some of you may see which I am missing?

I am debating on trying it myself if we get some interesting feedback here.

 

put a drop in filter, same thing and you can put it back to stock in about 10 seconds

 

I already have that. I am just trying to assertain if this could create an indentical function to the aftermarket short ram intakes. If so, this is a far more cost effective option.

 

Buy the GM MAF adapter kit from Spectre (don't know the part number) and a cone filter and make your own SRI, works and sounds good too!

 

I already have that. I am just trying to assertain if this could create an indentical function to the aftermarket short ram intakes. If so, this is a far more cost effective option

 

it is not the stock filter that sucks its the stock hose. so your home made intake would do little to nothing for performance. your better off getting a silicone 90 degree hose that goes from 3.5 inch to 3 inch and one from 3 inch to 2.5 inch then use a 3 inch diameter pipe from autozone like a spectra piece and hook it to your stock filter. then take a vacuum barb and poke it into the upper 90 degree elbow and hook it to the pcv breather tube.
I thought about doing this.

 

What's holding you back?

 

just so you guys know, pimplay2 made a custom intake and got a lot of knock to which he reported the car was slower than stock. there was a reason it took so long for vendors to release the intakes

 

What aspect of it caused the knock? Did he replace all the piping?

Also, is there any reason that just cutting off the box would cause a code? Keep in mind no sensors are being altered.

 

Yeah all last summer, when there were no intakes avaliable, many members did "home made intakes" and many had A LOT of issues and some reported lost power...

 

If you spent all that money on a brand new car, you shouldnt butcher job the engine bay. Make it look nice and just spend the money on an intake. I know the cost is a bit much, but at least it looks nice and has been proven to work properly. Who knows it might work, but if it doesnt your going to have to buy an intake anyways.

 

speaking of intakes, where, if at all, does our stock intake pull outside freash air from. i can see no intake tract that would draw in fresh air. the engine bay? wheel well?

 

Good point.

Passenger wheel well, but it is small plastic tubing and has sharp bends...

 

his is what mine looked like



i never had one problem with my intake untill i put my aftermarket one on

 

just so you know pimplay afro engineered his MAF adapter

and that is was the culprit of his problems... the reason it took vendors so long to get a unit out was the elbow going to the turbo and the Vaccum line adapter, which has caused problems for some anyway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaBn4...e=channel_page


there is video of my intake and Dejon BOV spring update, I used a spectre MAF adapter, tubing kit, and extra elbow, and a 3" cone filter, been running it since August with no issues whatsoever(besides hardware, which I corrected), car isn't any slower than it was stock and gas mileage has stayed the same... the only thing I did was replace the couplings from the spectre kit with 3" rubber couplings and hose clamps as I didn't trust the ones in the kit, had one pop loose from the MAF adapter the day after I installed it, replaced those and its worked like a charm... I can't wait until I get a tune and hit the dyno, i'm going to bet there won't be a mils worth of difference between this setup and others

been meaning to take some pics, here it is before it went on the car, thought I removed one of the straight pieces for a better fit and like I said replaced the couplings around the MAF adapter with rubber couplings:




mine is a fenderwell setup though, not a short ram, in my experiences with GTPs, you could eliminate 1-2 degrees of knock just buy moving from a short ram to a fenderwell setup, and I proved that with an autotap, had about 3 degrees of knock with my short ram bolt-ons and 3.5" pulley, went to the fenderwell and bye-bye knock, never saw more than blips

 

You are not going to get the turbulence with the SC that you will with a turbo setup. That is probably more the culprit than any other symptom. Also you may peg the MAF voltage with the aftermarket or homemade intake do to incorrect diameter of the piping.

 

already own a dejon intake with recirculated bov. plus supposedly the gm stage kit will have one already so if it does I think my intake may become pretty worthless.

 

The stock intake has a lots of restricitions with the ruber part.... plus it wouldnt look nice at all.... just spend the money and get an intake that wont give you headeach and that would do the job as its supposed to do... i tried it but the codes keep coming on.... its a pain on the ass....

 

But a huge difference in the 2.0 TC vs 3800 S/C engine bays

3800 S/C- Heat from Supercharger running faster which absorbed heat, Heat from cross-over pipe (exhaust), Heat from front exhaust manifold, and the natural heating that would occur from the compressor wheels of the supercharger. The engine bay was a heat sponge

2.0 TC- Heat from.....All exhaust related components in the rear of the engine bay. Natural heat up of air from the turbo charger, then goes to the intercooler, then to the engine.

Putting an intake in the fenderwell has little effect on the 2.0 TC. I loved my 3800 s/c when I had it, and even thought before purchasing my balt to find a in-good shape 4 dr GTP Sedan (before the horrible 03+ body style) and just go all out on the engine (had to purchase car for the first time after 4 years of not having one as I used company cars), but I just figured I would go w/ the car that was more all around fun to drive instead.

 

I was looking at doing this, and did alot of research about people who had done it, and their results. Many sounded promising but the results were non satisfactory. Those that could data log, reported a lot of knock, and some people's cars even went into limp mode.

This, from what I understand, is due to turbulence over the MAF, much like cavitation in the airflow.

Just my input. I have heard of a few people that have done the mod successfully, but I would go ahead and fork over the extra cash for a real intake.

 

I haven't had a single code the entire time i've had mine on, no limp mode etc...

 

Well, you would be one of those that I have heard of that haven't had any problems. The problems seem pretty scattered, and I couldn't really find a correlation, so IDK.