In case anyone ever wanted to put conical filters in thier E, here's what I did...

As of right now I still have to bend up a heatshield so the filters don't ingest massive hot air from the engine bay. I will be using thin aluminum (from Home Depot) and will probably use some type of heat reflective material on it from DEI or Thermotec to finish it off.

I had ordered a spare set of intake snorkels from Philip at www. m e r c e d e s s h o p .com for $72 shipped-very helpful guy. I didn't want to cut up my stock ones since I wasn't sure how well this would work out.

All I basically did was cut the intake snorkels at the ribbed section, leaving about 3-4 ribs toward the engine side. I used K&N cone filters (part # RU3130) as they seemed to fit pretty good. They are a tight fit, and the base of the filters actually rest on the valve covers (so I will have to come up with some type of heat shield there as well). I didn't have to make any brackets to hold the filters in place because of this.
The intake "funnel" had to be removed from the driver's side (the small funnel piece that the snorkel attaches to at the front of the engine bay next to the radiator) so the filter would fit.
The passenger side was pretty straight forward as the base of the filter also rests on the valve cover. You will have to shorten the small coolant hose at the "T" that points forward. I can take some more pics if anyone wants them.

Once I got the stock panel filters out of the intake box, I used a very small bead of silicon to seal the upper and lower pieces back together.
Sealing the intake snorkels to the box, I used DEI's "FireTape". This stuff is like electrical tape, but it doesn't have an adhesive side. Once the material touches itself, it sticks together, sort of "fusing" itself if you will. I wrapped it around the connection of the snorkel to the box acouple of revolutions to make a good seal.

Once that was sealed up, I simply connected the filters to the hoses and started her up. Everything seems pretty good and sealed as I didn't hear any vacuum leaks. My initial test drive was not bad. I did somewhat feel abit more throttle response as it seemed crispier. Upstairs it "seemed" to pull alittle more and sounded a tad throatier. Obviously I know that without dyno runs (before and after) I'll never know what or if there was an improvement. But overall I'm pretty happy. After acouple of more days of driving, I'll see how things are holding up.

Here's a pic of how it turned out...



If anyone else has done something like this, please post up some pics, I'd love to see how you did it and what you used.

 

Nice job!

 

Hmmm, don't you suck in more hot air from the engine compartment this way??? In my 02'E55 I only have K&N filters in the airbox. Good luck with your project.

John

 

Looks nice. But the hot air may reduce performance. It probably sounds great. Can you fabricate some sort of box to go around the cones?

 

The hot engine air most definitely will kill power. I'll post some pics once I get the heatshields in place.