Cold air Intake? - Not a Joke or Noob question

This 'air flow meter' is actually just a you standard run of the mill MAF...the picture posted 'Not actual part - example of part type only' But I agree, looks to be simple to make...I commend you for mock-up. Look forward to your final product.

My current 2" version hasn't thrown any codes...Trying to keep smooth transitions to get better air flow with the all aluminum mandrel bent 2" tubing.

Other prototypes...that didn't throw CELs..
(1) Cone filter attached to stock Airbox with both air box filters removed.

Routing Air intake from fender

My First attempt at a new MAF housing - used a Yaris 2.25" CAI but modified the air flow around the MAF to be 2"

Routed the air to the fender using the same modified 2" MAF housing.

 

I read through the entire thread last night, I saw all these pics as well as your first 3" atempt.
I never actualy measured the stock piece, it's likely metric and it would be pointless as you wont find such pipe arround here, I looked at all the parts stores in town and theyr exhaust tubing since I can work steel myself figured it would be a cheap atempt, the size that comonly matched perfectly to the stock piece is an 1 3/4ID, but that is an expanded part and most had heavy tool marks, it would have been ok but I am trying to get a nice smooth run might even hone it when done, the 1 7/8 od was a bit too large, but that is a standard extruded part and it's nice and smooth, I found at an autozone an odd piece marked 1 7/8 but it was smaller than all the other ones in town with the same label, and it's a perfect match,
at the same time what I am aiming for is put a cone right on top of it, no plumbing whatsoever, I may build a shield around it, we'll see how it does,
I got a Speed by Spectre at murrays for $20 it's rather large no size listed and I did not bother to measure it, autozone had it for $25 there is also another shorter wider spectre open top for about $25 it's a 4" with a 3" adapter but what I am trying to acomplsh is do away with the plastic, I need the room for some other stuff, there are smaller filters available but the prices go up, the elbow setup would give me most room but that is more money and lots of pipe to be secured, it gets complicated and I don't think it's necessary, I think $35 was the next best thing and it goes from there sky is the limit, unless the $20 one is too big to leave me space for the other project there is no reason to compromise and pay more for a smaller filter it wont make a diference,
that engine does not need cold or a lot of air or all those baffles, not sure what the Ideea is there, noise maybe that long tube theory, unlikely, emmisions, marketing, quieter engine than the competition or who knows what other regulations are out there I can't imagine what would compell those engineers to go to that extend and overcomplicate things, I cut up all the other cars I ever had, never the wifes, this is the first time, if it works I could probably also use all the space behind the headlight too.
we'll see how I make out once I find some time to work on it, I was going to cut the stock one off the air box and get an extremely small cone, but they are special order in that size at the tune of $100 +, also as it turns out those boxes are not easy to come by and I seen a couple on ebay for $200+ Wth that's a $10 part, so I figured I'd leave it alone and see about fabing something from scratch, now I only need a 30 mm pipe to mount the actual sensor, oh boy, this one is going to be fun I may have to make one we'll see what I come up with

George

 

All couplings and aluminum tubings were found on eBay. The MAF housings were all sourced and custom made. Without sourcing the parts seperately like i did and making your own as u plan on doing...$110 is prob what you'll end up paying. Looking forward to what you come up with. You can pick up a 50mm cone filter for less than $10 shipped on eBay.



Agreed on hacking up a oem airbox...too expensive to replace.

 

I will have to check ebay, the one I got at murrays is rather large and it's a 3inch hole. I just ensured the one I have:
base 5 1/2"
top 4 3/4"
height with boot 6 1/2
1" smaller over all I'd be happier thou those 50 mm ones are motorcycle pod filters they are not even 3" at the base, they normally run 300 cc at 12000 rpm max, rough figure say it equates to 600 prius cc's bit of a stretch to 1500, not sure on those, may be too small, there are similar ones on ebay thou they appear to be even larger, would have saved me a few bucks thou.
My eyeball meter says that if I bothered to run the math the filter surface on the one I have is pretty close to stock, lot less restrictive thou.
I just ordered this one : 3" High Flow Dry Cone Cold Air Short RAM Intake Filter Blue Mitsubishi | eBay
it was cheap enough, open top and it matches the color of the car, it seems that 3" is a common size and the smaller 2.5 " won't do me any favors as the overall dimensions are rather similar regardless of brand just the boot is smaller, that being said if this works, and I return the one I have, my material cost would be about $30 and that is being generous, granted at the end of the day I'm $100+into it allready, bought some tools, blades etc but I am not counting those, labor if I were to keep track of I may end up with $200 worth into it and this seems to be the norm for your average kit, at the end of the day it's not about cost, if there were such a setup available by a known brand true and tested, I may have forked out the cash for it, but it's not, so I'm it.

 

this is essentially what i have, cone under the headlight, KN panel in the box. every 4-6 days i got a P0171 only after removing the charcoal filter (manual says its a HC trap to avoid any HC from escaping into the atmosphere when not running). just to test it, i swapped out the wife's lid w/ the charcoal filter still in it. so far, neither car has set a CEL.
i even thought maybe i did have a vac leak; perhaps CAI was pulling on the airbox causing intermittent leak from the seal at throttle. disconnected the CAI, so now only the KN panel filter in front of MAF. it would set the code in about 10 miles every time i cleared it. after swapping the lids, no CEL.

so it seems if you are gonna flow more air than stock, (poke at maestro, bless 'im: we are flowing more!) you need a larger diameter MAF housing to keep air velocity past the MAF down a bit. i think i'm gonna need to take the kn panel out of my airbox and use a stock filter for now, cause the P0171 irritates me more than the lack of horsepower...

 

those are very good points, thanks for sharing, I was wondering what your issue was since you used the stock airflow meter if you will, maybe one of those motorcycle filters might not me a bad Idea after all. rough Idea a 47-48 mm would be the size, to match, I might just order one just to have it on hand, also I wonder if any charcoal filters would be available, either 3" round since I am doing custom work I could incorporate it, or something to wrap the cone in, any of you's ever seen something like this? back to ebay

oh and vacuum is only below the throttle plate I can't see how your setup would affect that there is no vacuum in the intake

 

2 75" High Flow Chrome Dry Cone Air Intake Filter Chrome Universal Fit All 2 75 | eBay

this guy either has very large hands or that is a small filter, pretty cool but I figured I'd stick with the more common 3"

 

a preliminary search yield several cabin filters, I seen such filters for water/fish tanks, also those emission canisters, never cut one open, granted the kind of charcoal might make a difference too, I'm thinking a 3" puck sandwiched between 2 screens built into my setup, any Ideas or suitable charcoal filters?

 

i would not add a charcoal filter, unless you could verify how restrictive it is. if its too restrictive, you're not adding any air flow capacity.
issue appears to be that if everything is flowing w/ no restriction, the air velocity past the MAF is beyond the parameters in the ecu, or beyond what the MAF can handle. so if you plan to eliminate the airbox, use a larger than stock diameter for your MAF housing, or a smaller than optimum filter to slow the velocity down some. it could be that eventually my ecu might learn to deal w/ the extra air, but it sure doesn't seem like it. i would like to try a 2" or slightly smallerMAF housing if i could find one for a decent (read cheap) price.

 

google search yelded:
Tristar, probably my best bet see stage 4 filter
Environmental Supplies cool as fudge, too rich for my taste and probably not what I need
Dyson DC07 Vacuum Cleaner Charcoal Filter | eBay it's a thought
Rear Exhaust Filter for Tri Star EXL A101 MG1 MG2 etc Vacuum 1 | eBay option
Dyson DC07 Vacuum Cleaner Charcoal Filter 10-2311-61 love the price but it does not mention activated charcoal


and I think we have a winner:
Compact / Tristar Ultra 1768 Vacuum Carbon Filter CO-1767 I ordered 2 with shipping $14, even had a cash back $10 from freeship.com but they wanted a credit card too and I did not feel like messing with it, if its too restrictive I'll thin it, not enough double it, changing diameter is a no go in my book as there will be air unaccounted for at all.

any thoughts, suggestions or other Ideas would be apreciated

 

i don't think that is gonna absorb much hydrocarbons... anyway, at least in VA, they don't test the prius for emissions, so it really doesn't matter if a little bit leaks out of your cone filter.

 

nor do they test in CA... which is why I don't have a problem worrying about passing emissions with a modified intake system or exhaust.

 

that was not the point boys, of all states michigan would be the last one to start testing, and for all I care it should start with the suv's and it should be ppm(ile).
the reason I went for it is because the only stock box that threw codes was the one without figured it takes a few days to get here, if I need it I'll have it in hand, besides just because its not regulated why not try to make it right, now I got to find some sort of a screen/mesh to mount it
I think I'll have some time to mess with it tomorrow, we'll see how it goes, actually the more I think about it this almoast explains the design of the intake, if anything it may work as a plug/inverted Ptrap type deal, does this make sense to you, I had to check the polarity of the injectors a while back, long storry, but I had to power up the car with the injectors unpluged, I could have sworn it was running for a while, kept secondguessing myself thinking that it was mg1 that spun the motor that longt likely the entire manifold up to the charcoal filter was full of gas mixture, than again hold that thought the box was off, still interesting.

 

Interesting observation..hmm

Suppose this was in your interest to do the LPG conversion? Are you looking to possibly change the manifold as well?

 

yeah I'm a bit of a geek and I like to do my best to be as precise as I can, I got my kit last week and been studing since fall, just about every conversion I seen (most by "professionals") has a few compromises, due to available space for component mounting, now that I have the parts in hand I can see why some installers did what they did, and thou it would be ok, and in real life it won't make a difference, I still would like to try and do a bit better, hence the airbox has to go, hope this works, or at least I got to try it before I drill the manifold nozzles, I got some new pics, made a bit of progress today,
the task today was to find a 30mm pipe to mount the sensor in since it has an oring to seal has to be pretty exact, right good luck with that one on this continent, I had some odd pipe laying arround, oddly enough one had the OD that I needed for ID and the other the exact same opposite so I cut the larger one lengthwise, and gently shrunk it, needless to say it got a bit oval but with a little tweaking I got it just right, I was fixing to stich a few of those parts together when the rain chased me away, either way the wife is at work and I need the airbox to check some stuff.
as for the manifold, no way in hell am I messing with that one, that is: the finely tuned part, not the box, baffle, honeycomb, silencers and all, sure there is some thought behind them too, but the manifold on this motor is vital to the akinson, vapours rise, so I recon that is why the intake from the valves to the snorkle keeps going up and down
I do have a request of you, I see you are pretty good finding pics and schematics, can you get one of the TB, I am curious what all these hoses are for, the 2 are for cooland, one of the larger one looks like a valvecover vent, the other from below the butterfly, I can't see where it goes, I'd say its a vacum for a brakbooster normally but this is not a normal car, there is a smaller vacum on the backside goes to a sensor mounted on the engine mount I want to say tha is a map sensor, thou would be nice to confirm it.
where do you get all those ilustrations and part number cross refrences, do you have some technical manual or just google.

 

well a little bit of welding and a $thit load of grinding and this is what I have to show for myself so far. I know the top flange warped, not to wory it will straighten up when I clamp the filter adapter to it and it will warp some more when I weld it, the trick will be welding the pipe that will hold the sensor, this thing is unbelivable small, looked bigger on the plastic box, I'm not sure how am I going t get a good bead between that pipe and the flanges, and as it is I allready burned through a few spots and had to redo them, I may have hit the wall here we'll see, I'm kid of at a standstill as the wife is not back yet and I wanted to look at that box some more before I go any further, in the mean time, enjoy some pics.

 

Pretty much sums it up.


I do look a lot of stuff up on the Toyota sites to get part numbers and cross reference things. I use http://www.toyotapartszone.com a lot and a few others.

Which hose are you asking about?


Red is ..

Lots of good info here: Tech training

 

Bet that thing is more durable than the oem by far!! nicely done.

 

the top fat one comes from the valve cover, and goes above the buterfly, that should be the CPV valve thou I have not seen one, the other fat one is below the buterfly, that I don't know I would say it's a brake booster thou I thought the prius was a bit different wonder if it even has a booster I have not seen one yet

 

got more pics, wouldn't you know it I pulled it off, I got to get some M4 srews and nuts in the morning, I think my welds are watterproof thou I did burn through in a few spots had to fix it, wonder it I should use that pastidip or I have used before the dipAtool, needless to say the hood doesn't close, I could buy and inch or so by cutting the insulation, I even had a ricer scoop laying arround, tryed to take a pic but it would not sit still, wonder if the wife would let me cut the hood (not) it would make things so much easyer I did a custom shaker on my S10 a while back, still on it worked pretty good
there are shorter filters too and originally I was planning on building a box to draw air between the hood and grill