Hey everyone and welcome back to the Sawickipedia. In this episode we're going to be
using a common household item to create an air box for our short ram intake on
the Mazda. Now if you know anything about air intakes you'll know that there's a
short ram intake, otherwise you can have a cool air intake, otherwise you can just
have your stock air box, but there are upsides and downsides to both. The reason
you might want a short ram intake is because it's less restrictive, so the air's
got less paths to go through in order to get into the engine, mix with the fuel,
ignite, and create your power. Now the downside to this is because it is so
close to the engine there's a lot of heat from the engine that's going to get
sucked in - a lot of hot air sucked into your air filter and obviously flowing
into your engine, and as we know hot air is not as dense as cooler air. So the
reason you might want a cold air intake, which generally will sit down behind the
bumper somewhere, usually lower to the ground, is because you will get that
cooler air coming in, but at the same time there's probably more piping so
it's going to be a bit more restrictive, and you also risk sucking up water or mud or
whatever. I know on my previous car I had a cool air intake and when I eventually
took it out it was so caked in just crap that had come up from the road. So
there are upsides and downsides to both and obviously with your stock intake
it's designed to be as quiet as possible while still getting that cool air in but
that usually makes it pretty restrictive. They usually have a few bends, so we're
going to play with our short ram intake. Now the common household item that I've got
lying around is this. I've already cut it up and in case you're wondering, yes it
is a toilet seat, don't worry it is clean. Now the reason I used this is because I
had it lying around. I mean, most houses they're not going to have a spare toilet
seat just sitting around, but if you've seen my other videos on this channel you
know that I recently put in a toilet seat with a bidet, and if you're
interested you can go check that out. I mean I do do a lot of other things apart
from automotive on this channel but obviously you've come here for the
automotive stuff so we'll move straight along. So what we're going to do is do a
couple of test runs. We're first going to take it out just as it is, do a couple of
test runs, see how that works out, and then we're going to come back, slip this
filter over, which is basically just going to sit over the top, so there's a bit
of shroud to cover the air filter, and this parts just going to sort of cable tie in here.
Now obviously this is not a permanent setup, this is more just a test
to find out whether or not this is going to give us any useful results. So once
we've done all the testing and data logging we'll come back and check out
our results, (Tripod is very sticky) check out our results, might even break out the
white board and plot a few graphs. So see what we come up with, if it does turn out
that the makeshift cold air box makes a large difference then I'll probably
consider getting, you know, a proper air box for this vehicle. The only problem is
these days they're a lot harder to find. I mean this car's been out of production
for about ten years, so those aftermarket parts of becoming more and
more rare. But yeah, like I said this will only be temporary option just to see
what results we get. So let's give it a go! I'm going to do the data logging with
the torque app for Android which will be connected to the obd2 connector, so we
will do that and go from there. Okay so a bit of a change of plans
with the custom air filter box - it didn't seem to make much difference. I took it
out on a couple of test runs, both with, and without it installed, and the
results were pretty inconclusive. So I'm going to ditch that whole thing, it's a bit
disheartening, but if it doesn't make a difference what's the point in doing it.
And we're going to look at other options to increase that cool air flow into the air
filter. So looking around the engine bay the main thing that I noticed that was
left from the install of the air take was this, which is the air
intake resonator. This sits below the air box in the stock setup. So here you
have the stock air box and this usually sits below in the vehicle like this. So
when I upgraded to the the Cobb short ram intake there wasn't any
instructions about removing this resonator. I mean it's pretty out of the
way, but it does sort of block off any air that's going to come up from the ground.
So hopefully that's going to make a difference, I mean I'm not necessarily
going to do a bunch more test runs. I've sort of had enough and that for now, but
this is more just something that's annoyed me for a while just having it
sitting there. I mean Cobb didn't obviously include any instructions about
removing it, but the rest of the instructions are very detailed so I'm
not going to fault them on anything, but it is one of those sort of annoyances that
I've always looked at after I put the other air intake in and thought, you know
I just want to get rid of that thing, and seeing as the original intake's not in
there anymore it doesn't make any sense to have the resonator in there.
So looking around the areas,
trying to figure out how I can get more cool air in here, the resonator was the
main thing I noticed. So normally it would sit down in that gap in the panel
here, just down in here, so I've removed that. As I said I'm not necessarily going
to do any more comparison test runs but we will go through how to remove that
piece,so let's begin. Okay so to get this resonator out the easiest way to do it
is to get your car jacked up, put on some car stands, and get your air box-side wheel
off, because you will need to remove this shroud in front of the wheel. It's held
in by about five plastic clips, and underneath there are four screws that
also need to come out. So once you've got those out you should be able to just
pull this aside like so. Watch out for all the crap that's going to fall out, and
you'll see in here, so this is our resonator and it is held in by three
bolts. So you've got the first bolt just up in here - they're all 14mm, and then
there are two other bolts which are bit trickier to get to, so I recommend
removing the shroud around the fog light, just so you can see a bit easier what
you need to do. So in here, hopefully if the camera can view it, there is another
14mm bolt just here, and there's another one about 10 centimeters above
that. So you've got to get those two bolts out, and they can be a bit tricky
so I either recommend using an offset ring spanner, otherwise you may be able to get
away with using an extension bar and a socket, and that'll hopefully give
you (try and get the gopro up in there) hopefully give you just enough room to be able to
use extension bar to get onto there. But once you've got those three bolts out
that's it, it should just pull straight up. So before we take that out we'll just
get an idea of how much how much that that's sort of blocks things off. So with
the light placed under the car, it's obviously very dark in here,
but you may be able to see there's only a tiny bit of light coming through
around the edges. This is the box right in between everything. I'll try and just
set the GoPro up in here somewhere.
Right that might have to do. So you can see that there's not a huge
amount of light that's able to get through, so that gives you an idea
of how much air can also get through into that area. I'll just remove the
shroud again and pull the resonator box out.
Okay, so we'll pull this out, put the shroud back in. That's it, now you should be able to
see how much more light is getting through in that area.
So obviously there's a lot, a lot bigger space that's opened up in here.
So that should hopefully allow a bit more cool air to get up in through here and
into your air filter. Whether or not it makes a real world difference, I don't
know, but it's almost just one of those things where it's something that's been
bugging me, and if you like me then near enough is never good enough. That's it,
it's really pretty straightforward to get out. As long as you've got the tools
to get access behind there, and as I said, once you've got the stock air box out
the resonators just doing nothing, it's just collecting dirt basically. That's really
about it for this video, as I said unfortunately due not getting
the results with my custom air box, I sort of ditched the rest of that video. There
was going to be a graph plotting the different curves. I was looking at
readings from the mass airflow sensor, obviously rpm, speed, the intake air temp,
the boosted air temp, and the coolant temp. But as I said it turned out that it
made so little difference that I couldn't actually tell, like putting them
side-by-side you wouldn't know which one was which, so
whether or not it would make a real-world difference I don't know. The
temperature outside at the time was about 35 degrees Celsius, so it is the
middle of summer (nasally accent) here down under. So that probably played a big factor as well
because the the temperature in the engine bay wouldn't have been that much
hotter than the temperature coming in. The biggest thing with removing your
stock air box is to get more air into your engine - less restricted air. So there
have been a lot of videos out there testing, you know, cool air intakes, and a
lot of them found the difference to be incredibly minimal. So I think generally
a short ram intake is the better way to go, it's just less restricted, you can get
more into that air filter, and into your engine, mixing with fuel, and once you spark, boom!
So hopefully this will help you out, I mean even if you don't have the same car
you may, you know, rethink where your intake is, and see what difference you
can make to get more cool air into it. But as I said it's more about
having less restriction, so in a way putting an air box around your short ram
intake may not be that beneficial anyway because you are going to restrict some
airflow from some area. Obviously the idea is to restrict hot air going in, but
at the same time you're still creating a restriction. So as always be sure to hit
subscribe also hit the little bell button so you're notified when new
videos come up. The next one is going to be looking at installing an oil catch
can, better late than never I guess. As these are a direct injection engine
you're going to have issues with carbon buildup on your intakes because you've
got no fuel flowing over those intake valves, so we're going to be looking at
that and giving our intake valves a bit of a
clean. We're also going to do a compression and a compression leak down test in the
same video, so we'll compare the results before and after of that one. So as I
said be sure to hit that little bell button so you get notified of when that
comes up, and at some point we'll also go back to the the festy Ford. It's
currently on loan so we can't play with it at the moment, but there are going to be
a few more videos basically detailing other things that you can do to get your
car sold for the best possible price.
So yeah be sure to check that series out as well, but thanks for watching the
Sawickipedia! As always, please hit the like button, don't forget to subscribe, and
please feel free to leave me a comment down below, I'll always try and get back
to you as soon as possible. Thanks!