i need some input from you guys. to increase your airflowto your sri, is it possible to modify the wheel fender well by opening the air entrance to your intake(where the air comes in from under the wheel well)by cutting asquareenvelope size holeon the plastic well and then attach a wire mesh extendedscreen(like the one you put on your frontgrill for looks) or something similar but withsmaller holes on it. Instead of having those louver type cuts, you have a larger section of air going through the wire mesh. Having a sri, theproblem of water getting in the intake should not be a problem, since there is quite a distance before the water can get to the filter. but thats where i need you guys opinion on.what do u guys think? thanks for any replies.

 

So what exactly are you trying to do, where are you cutting the hole?

 

If I understand you correctly you want to cut the plastic wheel well skirt (often called the inner fender skirt) and put some wire mesh over the opening to increase airflow up to the SRI.... it may help a little but I don't think it would add that much.... One thing I've considered doing is run a metal (or plastic) dryer vent pipe from that opening in the bumper back to the sri (almost like a ram air) then fashion some sort of cover to put over it in the event of rain.... that way you get an increased ram air type setup but you can always safely cap it off

 

yep, that is exactly what i'm saying. your idea too is pretty good.now my question is, will you be cutting the hole at the same area that i'm talking about or you would be slightly forward of that so if you cap it off you would still have that original vent opening for the air.is that what you are saying?

 

I was talking about trying to find a way to get in behind the bumper and mount the hose so that the opening of it is facing into the open air out the front of the car. so when you're driving it acts more like a ram air intake... I haven't looked close enough at it to figure out the easiest way to set it up but I don't think it would be to hard, and since it would be mostly hidden I was just going to mount everything with zip ties behind the bumper so all you see if you look is a white tube running down and facing out....

 

i foolishly did this when i first got my car and i wish i hadn't. i have a SRI too and thought it would help, but it only caused problems. nothing as far as engine damage, but i ran through a puddle and water got up in my headlights and broke the headlight bulb (was on because it was raining). this has happened twice so far. what i ended up doing was cutting a Samuel Adams beer box to a proper shape and put it under the filter whenever it rained. i recently checked it after it rained, and it was soaked so i know it works, but i didnt notice a difference in power at all with or without the cardboard.

however, the wheelwell has some of the most turbulant air on the car and getting more access to that probably isnt a good idea looking back. the air wont flow smoothly into the filter (even though i have the apexi filter known for good redirection of air). we're probably better off keeping the fender liner. im probably going to buy a new one. cleaning water and glass out of your headlights isnt fun at all, nor is worrying about it.

 

well it sound like it is not a good idea to do something like that.Thank you guys for your inputs, gladly appreciated

 

Another thing, I looked into a similar plan as I too have a sri. I thought about mounting 2 velocity funnels (Think the thing in the mall that you put coins iin, and they like spin down into the hole in the center) in my air dam, with piping the narrowed down from like 2" to about .25" that I was going to port into my sri. The plan here was that when I was rolling down the highway at like 60 I would be generating boost so if I had to pass somebody, I could just open it up lol. But I did some further research, and found that ram intakes don't really work as well as the theory says they do. At normal driving speeds and conditions, my research said that you could only expect like a 3% gain in horsepower, because you're not going fast enough to generate "boost" just from the air. I don't know if I'm really correct on this, but that's what I found out at least lol.If somebody can offer contradictin info though, I might try out the idea anyway lol.

 

yeah,why isthat?. how come that we see cars that have their hood scoop facing forward to gain more airflow to their intakes but it would not work well for usif you mod something like what we thought of doing to increase ourair flow(i.e ram intakes).also, we worry about hydrolocking our engines when we have cai's but what about the same cars like the sti/wrx's whose hood scoop facesforward and we know itgets wet when its raining and their filters are right under that scoop but they don't get hydrolocked? what type of intake or filter dothey used and is it possible we coulddo what they have or somehow manufacture something similarto our cars?? could anyone explain that?

 

Nightbreeze is right to a certain extent.... the amount of airflow required to generate "boost" or something even close to the amount of pressure that a supercharger creates is next to impossible to do based off outside airspeed or a basic ram air intake... However, it will help, like he said you may be able to get 3% gains, that's about 4-5 HP on a 94 EX Motor just by installing a cheap DIY kit.... that's the cheapest HP you're going to find... so in my opinion it's worth it, I believe that with a "custom" ram air type kit that only cost about $15.00 to make if you can gain 4-5HP it's more than worth it.... I challenge anyone to find a product that will realistically give you 4HP for $15.00