Custom Cold-Air Duct + Some Engine Dressing

I've never felt that the standard cold-air feed has been good enough to feed the induction-kit. The OEM duct consists of 4" wide plastic pipe that feeds the airbox, which has two inlets that join in the O/S front-wing - one comes up from a vent somewhere in the front-bumper and another that just catches ambient air at the side of the grille.

The car isn't exactly gasping for air, but with the straight-through exhaust and induction I think its time to rethink the bumper inlet and fit a bigger, more direct duct. For the meantime, I've thrown in an extra temporary duct-hose to aid the air flow a little. I found a nice length of flexi-hose that fits nicely between the cone and a gap in the grille, but its not much more than 1" in diameter so I'm not expecting a great improvement in performance. It's some more air flow none the less.

*EDIT: Just found out that the flexi-pipe is the heater-duct from an LDV Maxus van so we're now rocking British Leyland parts on the Hamamatsu bad boy - how quaint!*

In an attempt to catch more air for the rear of the filter I have started to develop a custom cold-air box around the cone. The exposed filter also has the downside of sucking in hot air from the engine while the car is standing still and the box will also hopefully help to prevent this somewhat - only time will tell.

So far I've installed a back for the box made of plate-aluminium. I got hold of a nice big sheet of the checker-plate and I'm making a few nice bits with it for the front foot-wells and made the piece for the airbox from an off cut. It does look pretty sweet and I've seen alloy used for these before, but ultimately carbon-fibre insulates heat much better so I'll be moving to it, or kevlar, if the design works.

I just cut the plate about 18"x 8" and bent it at a 45° angle halfway down so it curves underneath the cone. I then cut a small metal 90° bracket down to fit and fixed it to the inner-wing using one of the existing wing bolts. I drilled a hole in the top left corner of the plate and attached it to the bracket with a nice yellow allen-head bolt.

Great looks and a nice bit of engine dressing at zero cost! Great, but whether it is functional is yet to be seen. To complete the job I'll add a angled side piece to the right of the plate and some rubber strips to the underside of the bonnet to create a complete air-box.

I've also plenty of checker-plate left over so look out for a host of nice little alloy touches for the interior!