Highbeam removal vs rain

[DarkWing6]

"can my car fly?".

Yes!

[Devil Inc]

^Awesome. Is that thing still alive, haven't seen anything on it in awhile?^

[iwillhunt]

I removed the headlight, ran piping directly into the stock air box, and replaced the air filter with a Pipercross foam panel filter. It rains plenty here, and i have no problems at all. But i don't know how water could possible get in the air box and up through the air filter without either A) being obstructed by the screen i placed where the light would be, or B) draining out the drain hole at the bottom of the air box. Your situation is obviously different, but i wouldn't think a terribly large amount of water could get through the filter if you have a screen in the hole. If someone in front of you runs over a big puddle and you don't have anything to block the water, though, you may have a problem.

And for the record, i did the high beam removal/piping shit because i was bored one day, not because i thought it would make my car totally fuh raze or give my any hp gains.

[accident]

Yes!

jesus christ. what setup are you running to be able to jump it like that?

[gearheadE30]

how does a 3.5" diameter pipe help anything when the throttle body is less than 3"? common sense..

The stock pipe that is there (at least on the M42) is just under 2" diameter at it's smallest point. A 2" pipe logically flows a lot less air than a 3"-3.5" diameter pipe, but I'm nut sure how much of a need there really is there. A 3.5" OD pipe just happens to fit perfectly in the holes in the airbox and the headlight backing cover. It may actually be 3". I can go check if anyone is interested. I only discovered how small the inside of the pipe was because the rubber was so degraded it was getting holes in it.

[CrazyGhost]

I noticed alot of people have said not to rip out your light! So i probably shouldnt post up this picture!




I can hear the brains bubbling away with excitement already!

[der affe]

meh, my car came with both high beams deleted and screens. it also is a 2.7 stroker, ford maf conv, dbilas ITB's , camzilla. i put a prefilter over the cone, that helps with the water. need to build a heat shield though.

i like the way it looks. what evers. it is my car, not yours. i did put a W123 fog in the pass side today. not sure if i like it not being symmetrical though

[e30bmw]

Yes!

I was going to post that. :up:

And I have always heard that the stock airbox on an E30 is the best. And honestly, do you need the minimal gains in hp that might result from this. If you care that much about performance, lose some weight and strip everything from your car...

[z31maniac]

I still contest that all the CAI haters on here are hating, because most people do a half-assed non sealed off intake system.

I know the custom intake we built on my 300Z made a noticeable difference. But it was also sealed off to the outside "fresh" air and the stock location placed the air filer directly behind the radiator.

And CrazyGhost, I am intrigued because I've been looking at the CDA boxes for once I go with the M30 AFM.

[tjts1]

So how does this work?

YES! At least on an M42. Heres mine.

http://www.m42club.com/forums/showpost.php?p=48698&postcount=9

good luck

But how does it get along in rainy days?

I've driven through some massive rain storms, snow, road grime, etc. It never missed a beat. I kept the stock airbox and hooked the high beam to the airbox intake through a piece of 3.25" ID tubing. The only problem I ever had with it is that it would occasionally ping at full throttle and high RPM. Wideband O2 sensor confirmed that with the large forward facing intake and stock 19# injectors, the AFR was going lean at high load and RPM. 22# injectors fixed that. This is a knockout combination for the M42.

This doesn't work. Keep your lights in.

Try it before you knock it. This myth has been repeated so many times on various E30 forums that its become dogma.

Whats more important, the -3 hp you will lose, or the OEM light that was put there for a reason?

3hp? really? Do you have a source for that?

There was a study done that shows the stock air box is best in terms of intake performance on a stock m20. If you are going to take out the beam, or already did, just make a cover?

Link? Citation?
Heres my sources that say large forward facing intakes work. Granted, through the stock airbox.

http://autospeed.com/A_110824/cms/article.html

http://www.autospeed.com/cms/A_0663/article.html

http://www.mz3.net/articles/149.html

the stock airbox is already a cold air intake. there's a tube that takes air from behind the high beam directly into the airbox.

Try this little experiment. Take the outside temp sensor from the driver's side brake duct and stick it in your stock airbox setup through the intake. Drive around for a week and watch the temp. You'll be surprised. The highest reading I got was 110f on a 70 degree day. That doesn't sound like much of a cold air intake to me. Or better yet, after a 30 minute drive, place your hand firmly on top of your intake manifold. See how long you can keep it there. Mine stays cool to the touch even after idling in traffic.

I still contest that all the CAI haters on here are hating, because most people do a half-assed non sealed off intake system.

I think its a combination of that and "well if its not cool on the E30 forums, I'm not going to try it. I need to fit in damn it!" Building a sealed intake is very important IMHO.

[Rhys]

I had my high beam taken out for a while for a while and needless to say i now have it back in. One of the negative side effects i had was the engine bay getting filthy with all the shit that would fly in, even with a screen over the high beam hole. I live in Vancouver British Columbia and we get a hell of a lot of rain and the only issue that created was water all over your engine bay. That and people asking me all the time "why is there a light missing". I also seem to remember reading some where that unless you were going at least 100mph that you would not see any performance gains.

[OrganicMechanic]

I have my filter directly behind my removed highbeam. I have noticed that I need to clean the filter more often but the response is nice. As to the intake temps, I have not been able to log, but when I pop the hood and place my hand on the intake it is cool to the touch. Before it would be warm to hot.

[e30 power]

it makes no differesnt exept make ur car look a little better sometimes but ive had it out for like a year now no problems at all w/ rain man

[nando]

Try this little experiment. Take the outside temp sensor from the driver's side brake duct and stick it in your stock airbox setup through the intake. Drive around for a week and watch the temp. You'll be surprised. The highest reading I got was 110f on a 70 degree day. That doesn't sound like much of a cold air intake to me. Or better yet, after a 30 minute drive, place your hand firmly on top of your intake manifold. See how long you can keep it there. Mine stays cool to the touch even after idling in traffic.

even better - try this: datalog your intake air temp sensor directly with your standalone EMS and a laptop. :roll: I've done so for the last year and a half in all sorts of conditions - winter, summer, track/autox, city traffic, border traffic. Far more data than you could have collected eyeballing the external temp sensor duct-taped to your airbox. The outside temp sensor responds once every minute or so. my IAT responds in real-time. I can tell you two things:

1) on a 70f day, if you are getting 110f intake temps you've been sitting in traffic for a good 20-30 minutes. If you're moving at all, it's going to drop to ambient very quickly (10-20 seconds or less depending on speed).

2) on a hotter than hell day, it's not going to matter because even the ambient air is going to be 90-100f. once you're moving, it's going to cool down to the same temp, but it's not magically going to cool it to less than ambient, and it's still only going to take a few seconds.

my intake temp on a summer autox might reach 40-50c after I park the car and shut off the motor until the next run. A typical autox run is only 30-50 seconds long - and it will be back to ambient temp (say, 25-30c) by 1/4 of the run. I collected data on a day that was so hot we literally had to ask people to move their jacks off the pavement because they were sinking into the asphalt. I wasn't ever worried about my crappy old stock intake making the engine run hot.

the temperature of the air going through the filter isn't going to make your manifold cool to the touch, that's just idiotic - it's going to get hot simply because it's in contact with your engine block, which runs at over 200 degrees. 10 degrees in your intake isn't going to make dick-all of a difference to the temperature of your manifold, and the stock airbox is going to reach the same ambient temperature as your magical "cold air" intake anyway.

Also, if you're worried about a performance difference when you're stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, well, I don't know what to tell you - but on a track, it's going to do nothing for your engine's performance while making you look like a retard.

if you want to do it for sound - fine. I can understand that. but it's completely misguided to think it's somehow going to boost performance. Especially on an M42, an engine that's already pretty much maxed out from the factory.

[nando]

I still contest that all the CAI haters on here are hating, because most people do a half-assed non sealed off intake system.

I know the custom intake we built on my 300Z made a noticeable difference. But it was also sealed off to the outside "fresh" air and the stock location placed the air filer directly behind the radiator.

And CrazyGhost, I am intrigued because I've been looking at the CDA boxes for once I go with the M30 AFM.

or maybe some of us are just smart enough to realize that a "cold air intake" is really just an "ambient air intake" with a jazzed up name and lots of marketing behind it.