I had noticed that Hagane was equipped with an open pod filter a little while back. The good part of having one of these is that it does not restrict the air flow as much, and gives out better high-end power. The downside is that an open pod does not create much suction at low revs, which decreases the low end power.
Since I am getting Hagane ready for autocross, I would rather have low-end power than high end, so I decided to revert to a normal (stock) air box. The detail that irked me was when I sent my car for maintenance and I saw in the bill that they changed my air filter.
I thus popped the hood and opened the air box to find a nice filter smiling at me. Hagane was indeed running a totally useless open pod and stock filter setup. Looks like the previous owner was either conned into getting a useless open pod, or he was running the car without the filter.
Wanting to remove the useless open pod, I dropped the front bumper and got to work. The funny part was to see that the open pod was connected to the air box by an unfastened tube, which could have been disconnected at any time, rendering the setup even more useless.
I took off the whole open pod and pipe assembly and replaced it with a simple flexible intake pipe that I fastened to the air box. Since I was working on it, I decided to make it a cold air intake. The principle of a cold air intake is quite straight forward – bring the air intake pipe to the front of the car where the air is cooler so that the engine is fed with denser air, leading to a better combustion and a slightly better response.
While looking for a place to place the intake, I found a very simple solution – I removed the side fog light cover and stuck the pipe out of it. Simple, a bit grunge, but it does the job!
Check out Gordini's Pit Stop on Facebook
for a few night shots I took of Hagane during
a night drive somewhere in Singapore.
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