Cockpit induction?

[Ant]

With cowl induction as in the Holman Moody Fairlane which has a fabricated air box going back to the front of windscreen, looking at doing a similar thing with the cobra. but these cars dont have a grill or area to take advantage like other cars, but I dont see a major problem in going through the firewall with 3 -4" hoses to maybe a Pipercross foam air filter with the dual piping and locating the filter maybe where the passengers glove box used to be.........!

Downsides could be the cockpit is generally the warmest part of the car apart from engine bay and the induction could be quite noisey, but it would certainly make it easier than having larger hoses in my already cramped engine bay.

[vector1]

i bought a jbl that had cowl induction that was pretty nice and looked good although the hood was a bit heavy at 45#'s and had to be replaced so it was never reconstructed. i was in the process of building a locost couple years back and through the firewall was going to be used for induction because of supercharger inlet location. the previously mentioned jbl now has through the hood air cleaner and comp style windscreen and if the exhaust is quiet enough i can hear the air entering the carb and it is an impressive sound and changes as the butterflies open.

my cockpit is not warm btw and is real comfortable, course everybodies is different. when i had efi setup and sensor in intake tract with cleaner through the hood the temp would be right around 125 deg. fyi.

try it and make it reversible somewhat and let us know how it turned out. i have seen some trucks running around with the air inlet snorkels on the a-pillar but that could be difficult to explain.

[Ant]

It maybe only a matter of a hole in the glasswork and my engine is mounted in original SBF area by poly bushes and plates so not a lot of movement.

I could run hosing or some light alloy piping etc to in front of radiator and use pod type K&N filters or make my own foam style filter, but having a minimum of 3" diameter plumbing is getting big. My first thoughts were to make a duct attached to the underside of the bonnet but then there is joint issues where the duct connects to the carb.

The other issue is ensuring the 600+ hp engine gets enough air, we did dyno runs with no air filter and one using a 3.5" x 14" KN Nascar 2 ply filter and no difference or hp loss, and that was with a 1-1/8" air gap for the air to flow over the filter base, but that filter was over 4" higher than the bonnet and looked hideous, so whatever I end up with I am going to curve the scoop and still have 2" normal looking front entry and the main thing is not to have the a wide square air filter/box as this makes the scoop to hard to look round when I will be trying to line up the side of the track.

[RICK LAKE]

Ant I see what you are trying to do with getting cooler clean air to the carbs. The Major problem is a backfire or hicup and you get a fire ball into where you are sitting. If you like it hot or possiblity cooked. good luck. Have you looked into using the front air ducts that would go to the brakes instead for air inlets over even branch off them or make new inlets in front of the radiator. Messing in the passenger compartment is not a safe idea. Rick L.

[Ant]

Rick you are right there is a possibility of a bit of fuel and ignition could be very dangerous to my eyeballs etc. I am sure whatever type of air box I make there is available different types of plumbing and I can use alloy lightweight tubing down the engine valve covers or further out going to the air ducts. I made some nice fibreglass air ducts years ago which I used on my FE Cobra to cool the inboard Jaguar rotors these I still have so I could use them even in a position like the 289 FIA cars to do brakes or intake air....!

vector1
I think a lead in to the carb helps, we used a universal spinners 1.5" dropped base with the KN 2ply element mentioned earlier in this post which gave the same result as using no air filter on my Pro-systems 950 which has a nice sculptured entry, but probably not a good experiment. I see a few expensive historic rear engined classic race cars use the Pipercross foam type probably because it is relatively non restrictive, but Pipercross claim their element material is better at filtering and less restrictive than the oppositions cotton type elements......!

[vector1]

foam is some of the worst flowing stuff around from what i understand. fyi on the aircleaner setup, i went from a flatbase 14x4 setup to a dropbase spun type, same filter and went up 3 jet sizes to compensate for the increased flow, must have been something about the rounded entry into the carb, the top followed the dropbase silhouette in both applications.