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This is how I gave my X Type real cold air to the air box. Sorry for the pictures in advance. My hands shake a little. The first picture is how things look with the hose going into the air box. If you use silicone around the hose going into the 3 1/2" hole on the right side of the air box, make sure it is mostly cured before you start the car. Silicone fumes will kill oxygen sensors. You need to bend the oil dipstick to the cam cover, with something inside it. Metal round stock. Not a wood dowel, or the dipstick itself.
This next picture is of the hose going to a pipe coming up through the 3 1/2" hole drilled through the frame with a hole saw. It is cut using the hole saw almost up against the pipe going to the ABS unit. You will need to remove the grounds, and the ABS plug. It is released with a lever on the connector. Put the grounds and the ABS connector out of the way. I wedged them between the ABS lines and the engine compartment wall. You will also need to remove the line clamp closest to the engine. I left the rubber on that brake line in case of vibration.
The crush zone is mild steel, so it cuts real easy. Be careful not to get too wild with the hole saw, because there is an AC line about 3" under the frame member, and it looks like a bugger to replace.
Seal the bare metal left after drilling through the frame rail with some rust resistant paint. I used Rustoleum white epoxy paint.(a lot) This is no place you want rust to start. Leave enough 3" inside diameter pipe that you put through the frame to attach the upper and lower hoses to it. You can clamp the lower hose to the pipe, but I left the top one with a snug fit to the pipe, in case I ever needed to replace a headlight, or work on the ABS system.
I drilled 2 holes in the ABS bracket, to attach the 2 ground wires. There must be a reason they put the ground wires not on the same bolt, so don't stack them. Plug back in the ABS unit now.
I might weld the pipe, or use industrial epoxy to fill in the frame rail around it. It is really just a crush zone. One will be as strong as the other.
This last picture is of the hose coming through the lower support panel for the bumper. If it gets clogged, with snow or whatever, you still have the 2 factory snorkels coming over the radiator core support. I will put a mesh screen over the opening to keep out debris. There is about a 70 degree bend on the top hose, and a 45 degree bend on the bottom hose. That isn't too bad for a street car. It is certainly better than the 90 degree bends the factory put on the air box.
You asked for it, now you have it......Be cool.....Mike
I installed a scoop on the bottom of the hose, because I didn't feel like looking like the hillbilly I am. I also blocked off where the two little factory breathers were. Now she feels right, when I go to pass on the highway, even though now it is cold air induction, and ram air at the same time. I also opened up the drain hole a little in the air cleaner, so if it rains the water that makes it up there will have somewhere to go......Thanks for all of you stopping by on the post....Be cool.....Mike
Nice job! For once it's done properly, not like most of the time when people remove the air filter box and fit a new fancy colored air filter with "Racing" written on it, then calling it cold air intake, not thinking that without a box it would suck in hot air form the radiator and exhaust manifold.
The stock X Type has about as good a cold air intake as your going to get. It look like this setup has the air duct behind the rad where it will be heated (so it's actually a heater). Also the number of bends and the ducting type is an issue. It looks like this setup actually increases the effective flow length and resistance. So I'd say it's about as effective as painting flames on the side of the car!
Sorry you feel that way Tony_H, but after a lifetime of being the wrench on race teams, including being a mechanic on the unfair advantaged Audi team in the 80s, and being a VW Porsche Audi master tech, this is about as good as you can get, on a stock sedan, without knocking out a headlight. It has one 75 degree bend in the engine compartment, and about a 30 degree bend after it leaves the frame member to the scoop. Anything under 120 degrees is acceptable. If you add up the bends in just that short run that the factory put in, you are close to 180 degrees.
The tubing is also made that way to help with bends, and to screw into other tubing if needed. The baffle design will also keep heat absorption to a minimum, because the whole length is not laying against hot surfaces, just the tips. Look at the cold air intake tubes on some of the muscle cars. The same principal applies.
This setup does not help a lot in city driving, but on the highway it puts a lot of positive pressure inside the airbox, plus it doesn't sound like a fart machine, when you step on the gas. If I wanted that, I wouldn't have purchased a luxury AWD sedan, and instead have gone for some plastic Jap scrap, with a muffler 3 times the size of the exhaust, and not with a proper cold air induction, that gets it's air from inside the fender well, through a non heat absorbing plastic tube, like a WRX kit. Not one of these pretty chrome aluminium heat exchangers, that actually increase the temp of the charge, but sound neat, if that is what you are going for.
Don't poo poo an idea simply because you don't understand heat absorption principals, or positive pressure, or you don't want to take any more time than screwing an aluminium elbow onto a RACING cone air filter. This took me a week to engineer, and about 5 hours to do right.
Drive an AMG Mercedes, or an M Type 5 series BMW, if you want to know what well engineered powerful motors sound like. They sound just a little different than the stock sedan.....Be cool.....Mike
Would go with mrplow58 setup any day over the stuff I've seen done to X-Type intakes usually where they remove original box and put a "cool" looking cone filter in that place. It gets really hot there and and it will be sucking that hot air in. In mrplow58's setup where it's actually cold air going into the air filter box, add a better panel panel filter and it would be the best solution.
The W-30 ram air from Pontiac in the 60s was the single most effective ram air system before the 454 cowl induction system on the SuperSport Chevelles...that installation has fewer bends in it...
I can crunch the numbers with the right data, but I'll wager it is moving more air at a cooler temp than the horns, which are designed for emissions, not airflow.
The filter and throttle body may negate some of the effect, but the design is sound.
A surprising improvement (barely seen on the dyno, but definitely there 'seat of the pants') can be gotten by taking out the semi-circular noise block at the bottom of the airbox transition.
it'll make more noise, but it WILL move more air.
Most of my airflow comes from cooling big transmitter tube systems, but the math is the same...and I've been teaching it for close to 25 years.
They STILL do this in racing, although they tend to use a cleaner flow path (think headlight housing).
I'd be worried about water infiltration, which was an issue with the Pontiacs.
Sorry to double post...I just wanted to point out that on our lowly non-forced induction cars, the difference may only be 2.5-3% or so...but it IS an improvement...
A surprising improvement (barely seen on the dyno, but definitely there 'seat of the pants') can be gotten by taking out the semi-circular noise block at the bottom of the airbox transition.
it'll make more noise, but it WILL move more air.
Didn't quite get what part are you talking about, do you have any picture of that? Would try it out of pure interest to see what effect it has.
No pic handy, but easy to see; open your airbox, remove the filter, and look at the nipple that connects to the flexhose.
It is the 'fin' on the bottom side.
It does three things:
1.) stops small amounts of liquid water from passing through
2.)blocks sound coming back from the throttle body
3.)interferes with the air flow.
Carefully shaving it off does speed the response up just enough to feel. It definitely makes the intake noisier, and makes no difference to the actual amount of power being produced.
On my 07 air box, it doesn't have any of those fins on the bottom, or the noise block at the opening. I also took another look at where the hose runs, and it doesn't start until after the radiator. It starts just behind the head light housing, and turns down through the frame rail. I ended up taping up the underneath part of the frame rail, and pouring epoxy that is used in concrete repair, to seal around the hose and plexiglass pipe that goes through the frame. It rained like a bugger around here the other day, and I drove around 5 miles at highway speed through it. I opened up the air filter housing right away when I got home, and everything was still dry. Maybe the 2 bends helped some for the water infiltration. Experimenting to see how a design works is kinda fun.....be cool......Mike
Phew! For a second I thought you'd installed one of those electrically-powered fans that folks use as bilge-blowers in boats.
What you've done looks sensible and almost 'stock' in appearance still. Spent many happy hours doing this sort of thing on my old Honda Prelude. Haven't felt the urge to modify the Jaguar at all, 'cos it doesn't need it!
Colin.....I just got a 99 XK8 convertible along with my X Type, so maybe I will see you on the other forum. I love this car, and after I put new leather on the seats, and put a fresh paint job on her, I will keep her for 30 another years, or until I die, like my Porsche 928S. Keeping all 3 of them going is going to be a challenge on disability payments, but I love doing it......Be cool....Mike
Just a couple of technical corrections in regard to wa3ra's post...W-30 and W-31 were hipo option packages offered by Oldsmobile for the 442 and Cutlass respectively. Pontiac's hipo systems were designated RAM AIR II, III, or IV and were options available on various 1968 and newer GTO's. 1970?-72? Oldsmobile models equipped with W-30/31 and all Pontiac RA III and IV models sported manually (cable) operated cold air intake systems...and were effective pieces of kit for their day.
HOWEVER,wa3ra's observation that these earlier systems were eclipsed by the superior performance of the Chevrolet Chevelle SS 454's cowl induction system is "SPOT ON" in its correctness....
...just a few more recollections that are becoming dimmer...Advancing age S!@#S!!!! Regards. Andy
02-25-2015, 08:35 PM
You asked for it...Cold Air Induction
For once it's done properly, not like most of the time when people remove the air filter box and fit a new fancy colored air filter with "Racing" written on it, then calling it cold air intake, not thinking that without a box it would suck in hot air form the radiator and exhaust manifold.
