Airbox Lids all cut up and trimmed for mod.


K&N Orion Intakes C63


K&N Orion Airbox
Been a while since I’ve posted but worked on a project for fun and thought to share in case folks want to try something like this. It’s. A fairly tedious modification but fun to go through. One set of US spec airboxes were sacrificed to allow for this set up. You will need to cut out the intake tube form airbox lids and remove the interior velocity stacks. Units need to be glued and sealed together once cut out to avoid air leaks past the MAF. You will also need two 45 degree 3.5 to 3 silicone elbows and two 3 to 4 reducers. My set up used the new K&N Orion intakes which are rated to flow well for the M156. The air ducts also needed to be trimmed in order for everything to fit well. The MAFs were cleaned prior to install so they’re fresh.

my set up prior to this was a carbonio m156 intake, Afe prodry filters, with the carbon gruppe M style ram air kit. I am running an Oetuning tune, oem headers into primary oem cats. The mysecondary cats are high flow200 cell IPE units into the IPE exhaust. No other mods were done.

My car was dynoed at FFTEC recently on their Powerdyne Mustang Dyno. Car best pull with the past set up was 430 whp & 391 ft/lb torque. I will be driving the car for the next 200miles for learning and then retest to post results. Not sure if it added anything but car is noticeably smoother from idle to redline. It does seem to pull harder up top but this is mainly my butt dyno. May be a complete waste of time but it was fun going through the excercise.

if you do most of the work yourself, it should cost less than $500 all in for this set up. It may be a great alternative to the row set up or carbonio set up given the price and is well suited for those who want to do the work themselves. Enjoy and will post dyno number even if they end up not working at all.

 

Some additional points on the mod:

1).factory engine cover over will not fit anymore so won’t exactly be pleasing to the eye initially.
2). A very good air tight seal is needed especially on the MAF housing side to avoid idling issues.
3). You can always source a second set of lids on eBay...I cut one a pair I bought for $50 a while back. Or if you have row boxes and the originals ones..cut the factory ones. I ended up having to use one velocity stack from my row air box to complete it.
4.the black velocity stacks needed to be trimmed down so the 3.5in elbow will go over.

 

Very interested to know if this actually improves airflow....are you able to do a back to back comparison of stock airbox to this one and log?

I made one a few months ago and according to my logs, it failed miserably (lost 25 - 30 g/s airflow up top), so I'll be revising it in due course and trying again very soon.

 

Calculating the lateral area of the cone trunk and subtracting the area of the OEM rectangle is not difficult. You think you gained area?

 

Nice work, nice to seem something different being done and I think it looks pretty cool, you can probably make something to cover the ugly stuff at the font of the engine or modify the original one to mount somewhere, will be interesting to see how it dynos!

 

I could try to do that but would be interested more in finding if the set up adds more or looses power across the band. Will drive it for a week or so and then dyno to test it.

i also did it to make the air charge direct straight and see if that helps compared to the inverse z shape of the airbox. Since our cars don’t have a shortage of torque I was worried too much about low end. We shall see in a week or so. If it doesn’t add any power then carbonio will go back in.

 

Will try try that later for sure.

 

yes I have two covers. One is carbon and the other one is the oem unit so I was thinking of cutting it down but will see.

 

I like the way they look. Have a pair of air boxes sitting idle since I swapped to row's. I think you need to dyno these compared to row boxes with afe filters (seems to be the most popular) to see if it was worth it. Is that possible ?

 

i dynoed my car with carbonio and gruppe m style ram air and got 430hp, will be using that as baseline. The carbonio should provide a little more power than the ROW boxes which I also ran before but didn’t dyno. Worse case is they perform the same so it’s a good baseline. Only issue I have is the not using the gruppe m style ram air as I had to use stock airducts in order for the set to fit well. I didn’t want to cut up my carbon ram air if things didn’t pan out. Yes I will be dynoing this shortly in a week or so when I run down the clock on the learning process. So far, at least for me, car seems to be doing well with the set up especially top end pulls. Not sure if it’s mkaing more power or the change in delivery. Will keep you posted. Here’s hows the test cuts went for the main maf housing from the lids if you plan to do it.



Assembled maf housing

 

Important:

Maf housing consists of 3 parts. Out housing, internal sleeve and external velocity stack. These need to be glued together as one. I used epoxy. One done, you need to seal the velocity stacks to the maf housing with silicone. This will prevent extra air from being drawn in via gaps and cause idling issues after maf sensor. I also sealed in the interior outlet gap Between sleeve and maf housing to make sure nothing goes past the maf.

 

will need to dyno all options same day same dyno same conditions to compare.

cool project.

 

That's a fair shout buddy. I'd love to see it make power. We need an affordable intake solution for our cars tbh. The renntech is uber pricey. 10hp gain is the gold prize if you can make it

 

10hp over carbonio intake with the ram air kit (baseline 430hp) would make me happy lol..butt dyno says maybe...will keep you guys in the loop. If it makes 420 to 425 would be close to row box set up, 420 below would be inline with stock US lids. Just wondering if I got 431hp...I would shoot myself lol..

 

great job thinking outside of the box. hope it works, keep us posted.

 

thanks! This was literally outside the (air) box!

 

3 full days for traffic and commuting with a few hard pulls...no cel and no issues so far. Idling seems to be greatly improved and power delivery smoother from regular airbox set up. Butt dyno says maybe more power. I have scheduled my dyno session on same dyno this Friday so will post details as soon as it’s done.

 

Good stuff man, keep us posted.

If you have the Torque app, it would be great if you could log the peak airflow of the stock system vs your one to see how it's really helping and where. The dyno might not necessarily give the most accurate reflection of what these can do, because of ecu adaptations and the time needed for fuel trims to get in line etc.

I've made some tweaks to my airbox and it's back in the car now. I might take the car out tomorrow and test mine on the highway if conditions are safe.

 

[QUOTE=Celicasaur;7300822]Good stuff man, keep us posted.

If you have the Torque app, it would be great if you could log the peak airflow of the stock system vs your one to see how it's really helping and where. The dyno might not necessarily give the most accurate reflection of what these can do, because of ecu adaptations and the time needed for fuel trims to get in line etc.

I've made some tweaks to my airbox and it's back in the car now. I might take the car out tomorrow and test mine on the highway if conditions are safe.[/QUOTE


I’ll see what I can do...if power increases then I look at that as a positive for airflow per se. Betting on air flow being smoother with no breaks from front to y pipe.

Your in the UK? I was about to order the smallest ITG Maxogen units which I thought would be better than my set up right now. It would require more work with the air ducts. Build quality would bebetter due to metal housing of the ITG units vs hard plastic of mine.mthose units are nice.

 

i am not sure why I have two maf reading but I am assuming maf in red is correct one. First time to log so hopefully this gives a good picture of current Orion set up.

 

You HAVE TWO maf's, that's why.
And this won't be as easy as this.
MAF is a precision instrument.
So it needs a good air flow in order to measure EVRYTHING. This good (laminar) airflow is obtained at the expense of some "directness". Cars use snorkels. Our cars are quite "daring".
Your car may get increased flow, but turbulent now. A tuner, after logging, could conclude than now not all air is measured and could turn down the coefficient for the MAF, cancelling the flow increase that you've accomplished.
By you just plugging something in and waiting for the car to figure out what you did, you will obtain inconsistent results at best.
Bring it to a tuner, have them check the intakes.

 

Might want to heat wrap that setup because it looks like the air temps are pretty high.they almost remind me of my supercharged e55.

You are 100 degrees above ambient temp

 

awesome thanks for the input!

 

yes that was the plan just haven’t done it yet...I already have the gold wrap but wanted to make sure all was well before wrapping it. Will be completing that when done with dyno.

 

Thanks for catching that in general....as I was driving today I got a cel light with code P0071 (ambient air issue).....my ambient sensor is faulty or fell off I think....will try to fix it later today still need to locate it. Call a mechanic who mentioned it may have fallen off or be loose after my install. will review...I was monitoring it this morning and saw my ambient air temp go from 65F to 125F down to 80 and back and forth.