I am planning to built a small series of air intake reducer, if there will be enough request:
From 150mm to 100mm to connect the air intake hose in the motor bay with the intake on
the left part of the rear clam in order to bring fresh are to the airbox instead of the heated air of the motor bay.
The finish will be like the oem airbox.
Here is a picture of a prototype I already made that to be honest works quite well:
Adriano - I would caution against connecting the airbox directly to the clam intake; as I recall the reason this wasn’t done by the factory was because of the concerns for taking water into the engine when driving in rain.
Hence the open end of the intake ‘trunk’ is inside the engine bay, directed towards the intake but a short distance away from it.
As far as I know the connection to the air intake on the left side of the clam was part of the “Motorsport Kit 190”,
directly sold by Lotus, but unfortunately not available anymore.
N. 24 in the picture (sorry for the lousy quality)
I like the idea although not sure it will do much for engine bay temperatures. If the left intake is effectively sealed to the airbox, there’s not going to be much airflow into the rest of the engine bay? Maybe OK if you have the vented/motorsport engine cover though.
BTW I have similar setup ducting the right-hand intake directly to the alternator / manifold area, but obviously this air is then free to circulate, it’s not a sealed system.
The main goal is to keep the temperature of the intake air down, not the temp. in the engine bay.
The engine will run much better with this setting
I will also advise to change the position of the air temp sensor from the intake manifold to the airbox to have a correct ECU-reading
of the intake airtemp.
The reading with the sensor placed on the manifold was 100 C and it dropped to realistic 20 C after positioning the sensor directly
in the airbox.
Note: you do not have to drill any accessory hole in the airbox.
To drop the temp of the engine bay I would suggest to use a racing hatch.
I would also suggest a big gap at the bottom of the intake. The engine sucking will draw pretty much 100pc of what it needs from the fresh air intake, what it does not need will spill into the engine bay and aid cooling. If you go though a mighty splash of water I would expect any water to leap over the gap and onwards down the hose. The water drain in normally at the bottom of the filter box as in the standard elise air box. It obviously is a risk as many manufacturers fit some sort of water trap. If the engine does gulp in water it’s new engine time.
I did have a hose connected directly and sealed to the side intake on an Elise. I cut holes in the air pipe and was quite surprised at how much water dripped out on a rainy day,.
Also, there is no ram air effect from a forward facing air scoop, sealed, feeding the engine. The pressure gain, even at 100mph, is negligible.
Finally, sealing the intake to the engine will create spill outside the car from the intake rather than in the engine bay. That’s not good for aerodynamics though I doubt significant on an Elise/Exige.
With respect the engine will not run ‘better’ as the ECU already uses the temperature to correct fuelling for air density and one assumes Lotus’ engineers knew what they were doing when they developed the car.
Regarding the motorsport intake - as well as having a cut-out for water drain you must bear in mind that race engines tend to get a lot more care and attention than those in road cars. It’s perfectly normal to pull a race engine after comparatively few miles for rebuild so any issues tend to be addressed. Therefore parts designed primarily with a motorsport use are not necessarily directly applicable to road use.
If anyone wants to understand the damage that can be done by water ingestion, just search for ‘hydrolocked engine’…
