Induction Mods

Right time to have a look at the induction side of things, cooling the air getting into the engine, with a plenum isolator plate and heat reflective sleeving for the induction pipe, and helping it get air into the engine with new carbon fibre trumpets.

Heat reflective sleeving:
Easy enough to fit;

1. Undo the clips around the AFM and plenum
2. Unplug and remove the AFM (you don't have to do this but it makes life a lot easier)
3. Now you can slip the sleeve all the way down the long induction pipe until you hit the front bulkhead
4. I also covered the 90 degree bend in a couple of pieces of the heat sleeve, just to make sure

Trumpets and Isolator Plate:
This is a bit more involved, instructions to remove the plenum and trumpet base can be found here

A few pictures of the various stages;

You can see the various pipes and throttle pot removed from the plenum:


With the plenum removed; don't forget to remove the vacuum pipe to the FPR, it's at the back of the plenum:
Disconnect the vacuum hoses for the brake servo and carbon canister then remove the PAS reservoir (if fitted):


With the trumpet base removed; mine needed a bit of persuading, as you can also see, the use of kitchen towel to stop any crap getting into the engine:


Now to remove, clean and fit the new trumpets to the base.

Removing the trumpets can be a bit tricky, one method is to heat the trumpets and base in the oven for a while to melt the glue and they should just pop out, this can cause arguments with her indoors as she chokes of oil fumes!

So I played it safe and went for the brute force method, as I wouldn't be needing the trumpets in the future. I took a mid-sized hammer individually tapped the trumpets, on the side, so they started to rock in there slots. Eventually this broke the glue and they popped out one by one.

Cleaning the base was straight forward, degrease the thing using Gunk, and gently remove all the old glue with a Dremel, as you can see below it's a bit cleaner:


Now to fit the trumpets. Practice fit all the trumpets to the base before hand to make sure you know which way round they all go, hint: the trumpets meet on the straight edges:


Right now to prep the inlet manifold, this is just the process of removing all the old sealant from the mating surface:


Now to create an intake sandwich, on the inlet manifold a coating of red sealant then the t-spacer, another layer of sealant then the trumpet base. The base is then torqued down to 14-16 f/lb. I now reattached the vacuum pipes that lead to the front wing and the PAS reservoir.

Now to fit the plenum, putting sealant around the trumpet base, I squeezed the plenum between the last trumpet and the metal cover on the bulkhead. Remembering to reconnect the vacuum hose to the FPR beforehand.

Now to put the rest of the hoses and electrical connections back on; the stepper motor, the throttle pot, the dizzy vacuum advance, the breather hoses and the induction pipe.

Job done!

Does it start: YES....good start!

How does it drive? Well after getting the engine up to temperature I managed to get my right foot down, the car seems to pull a lot stronger mid to top range. On a rolling 2nd gear start it felt quicker up the speeds where I'd be saying goodbye to my license, glad I was on a private road.
Update: Note to self; when the roads are ever so slightly damp and you are at accelerating in 3rd gear, hitting around 3500 to 4500 revs the rear tyres (which have LOADS of tread) will spin!!!! :)

When I got back I got the bonnet up and the plenum was very cool to the touch, IIRC I wouldn't have been able to touch it before! Let's face it the bonnet stay was burning my hand when I put it in place!! I also felt as far as I could under the heat reflective sleeving on the induction pipe and the pipe was not as hot as it was previously