ZX TD Air flow

Paul Thomas · Unread post by **Paul Thomas** » 12 Mar 2004, 16:06

Has anyone done anything to improve the air flow into the filter as the existing arrangement would seem to be very inefficient with so many bends and twists ?
Also the entry point for the air seems to be fairly small.
I had thought about changing it to in the bumper to get more of a air-ram effect.
Anyone tried a replacement performance panel filter or K&N filter, any noticable difference ?

Unread post by **Jon** » 12 Mar 2004, 16:12

Ran a K&N in my last ZX TD, to me it didn't seem to make a great deal of difference, in fact I didnn't even bother removing it when I got rid of the car. Might help if you scrapped the existing air intake and mounted a nice big flexi tube instead? This would have to be high enough so that it did not draw up say flood water. Simple mods like this work quite well.

ZXturbo_Aura · Unread post by **ZXturbo_Aura** » 12 Mar 2004, 16:18

best thing to do would be a K&N cone filter(scrapping the standard air box etc),shield it with foil covered plastic to keep the air as cool as possible, then if you have not got fog laps, cut the blanks out, place mesh like oy racers have in the bumber grill etc and install air ducting behind the 'vents', route these to the air filter, therefore you will get tons of fresh cold air to the filter no matter what
Dan

bxbodger · Unread post by **bxbodger** » 12 Mar 2004, 16:30

I don't think trying for a ram effect would make any difference; this is the turbo's function, anyway. For a ram effect to work it would have to have a big mouth and be moving pretty quickly.You would probably end up with something that looks like my little ones hot wheels car!!!
Has anyone done a flame job on a ZX????

Paul Thomas · Unread post by **Paul Thomas** » 12 Mar 2004, 20:56

I would have thought that the more air you can present to the turbo the easier it would be working.
Certainly if it is having to suck air via a paper filter and a contortion of pipes and through quite a small air intake it would be working pretty hard.

mrbump · Unread post by **mrbump** » 12 Mar 2004, 23:17

The filter itself is almost NEVER the problem. the problem lies with every little thing that corrupts a smooth airflow. Even the overall length of the system is less important.
This article is good.
http://www.geocities.com/gjwarm2000/intake.htm
the real address is:
http://www.autospeed.com.au/cms/A_1023/article.html
But i think you need to be a member.
cheers[:D]

oilyspanner · Unread post by **oilyspanner** » 12 Mar 2004, 23:31

I seriously ventilated the plastic airbox on mx BX TD, it felt perhaps a little quicker? but sounded like a dump truck
stewart

ZEGA · Unread post by **ZEGA** » 13 Mar 2004, 07:46

ram-air input has best efficiency on normally aspirated cars...
In example great ramair input done in some of ferrari cars has power increase for about of 20HP @ 200KPH this is for 400HP engine, so it is around 5% with great conical input at great spot (on the top of the bonnet where pressure of the air is increased because of it's <car bonnet> slope)...
So normally you could expect 2-3% maybe less below that speed...
With turbo there is no difference, valve regulates this...
ZEGA

mrbump · Unread post by **mrbump** » 13 Mar 2004, 14:37

Turbo, or not, the only way to actually work out where the pressure drops in your intake system is to measure it!
Once you have found the restrictive sections or element, you can replace with free flow parts of your own design, testing again to see which works best.
If you can get rid of a couple of heavy restrictions in the intake tubing, you can easily find a couple of psi in a turbo car.
The way to test is to use a MANOMETER which you can make for NOTHING Look in above article).
Spend one weekend day testing and then you need speculate no more.
I have removed all my intake tubing on my zx volcane, running a rampod filter just where the intercooler used to be and sheilded from the hot cam cover by special heat refliective alu. Havent had time to test as I have bigger probs at the mo.
Cheers

Simon Canfer · Unread post by **Simon Canfer** » 13 Mar 2004, 16:20

I seriously doubt the intake is what restricts the XUD Turbo engine. The filter is nice and big, there's a turbo to draw air in and the design of the intake is no doubt to minimise risk of drawing in water (in floods etc), and to minimise intake noise.
For more power concentrate on burning more fuel (see recent threads...) Once you've increased the fuelling so that you get lots of black smoke you need a bigger intercooler to cool the increased air mass down again.
Simon Canfer