End of season detail: '99 Mazda Protege LX

White95Max said:
What do you mean? They'll wear faster in snow than on dry roads? That doesn't seem logical...
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Even though we went over this in PMs I thought I'd post that- I meant they'll wear faster when you get through the snow and hit pavement, which can happen when you're doing parking brake turns. Didn't want people reading this thread to be all :confused: about what I meant.
 
The sun came out today while I was at school, but the clouds quickly followed suit before I got home. :hairpull

I did take a closer shot of my engine though...



Engine.JPG




I really need to scrub that intake manifold with a toothbrush. The Maxima's manifold came out pretty nice with a little scrubbing. The neighbors found it amusing too!





Remember this? :D



DirtyEngine.JPG
 
Maxy, what did you do with that piece of intake plumbing? Looks like it was there to make sure you drew in cold outside air from under the front lip of the hood instead of hot air from inside the engine bay.
 
Yeah I took that off to clean it, and decided that I'd rather polish the heat shield and leave that plastic off. I've been debating what to do with the intake system for a while now. I even considered making some kind of extension to replace that tubing, which would go down to the bottom of the engine bay, or into the fenderwell. There's already a pre-drilled hole in the side of the engine bay, which goes behind the fender liner. I would like to put the tubing in there. I would just leave the stock airbox on. It's got a K&N drop-in filter in there now so I'd like to keep that.

We'll see what I decide. Any suggestions?
 
Paul-just run some 3" flexible tubing into the front fender and aim it towards the front of the car if possible. I did that with my Accord and when I replaced it all with an AEM cai, I only noted minimal gains...and a lot more intake noise. Should have left it the way I had it.
 
That's exactly what I was thinking. Just to put a hose clamp to attach some flexible 3" tubing to the inlet on the airbox, and run the tubing into the hole in the fenderwell. The way it is now, the intake inlet is right at the front of the engine, but it's near the top. That little engine gets pretty hot too, compared to the Maxima's 3.0L. Maybe the Injen CAI influenced the operating temp of the Maxima's engine IDK.



I may rig some type of "custom CAI" soon.
 
Paul-this is how my 626 is set up. You can see the large intake tube sealed off by foam in front of the battery. I intend to extend that tube into the fender but I have to do some minor cutting.



my_626_engine.jpg
 
Paul-that is the stock set-up. The end of the tube is just past the S on the battery. Pep Boys sells 3" flexible tubing but I would have to enlarge the hole by the battery on my car.
 
Oh. I don't have any stock tubing for it. The only thing I took off was that stiff plastic resonator box. I'll have to look into some tubing.
 
Watch where you position the end of the air intake when DIYing a CIA. The previous owner of my Caprice put on a system that vacumed up all sorts of crap. I'd rather have a little less airflow if it means not sucking up water/leaves/etc.
 
The hole that is factory-drilled in the fender allows access to a pretty clean area. It's behind the front bumper, and protected by the fender lining. I don't think much dirt or leaves can get in there. I will definitely look into what could possibly be sucked up the tubing though.
 
Just my two cents...that factory intake looked like it was shaped/placed to get some ram air effect when the car is moving, and not pick up debris so easily...although looking at your pictures it's hard to see where it's pulling the air from. There's a lot of work in that "manifold", so I gotta believe they put some thought into it.
 
Setec, when I took that intake box off, I took the hose and blasted a hard stream into the edge of the hood all around, to see if I had anything to worry about as far as water getting into my intake system. Absolutely ZERO water got in from the front. How much air could really get drawn in from a ram-air effect, when I couldn't even blast any water through that tiny gap?
 
Well...that's what I was saying, it's hard to see where it's getting the air from (of course, air is thinner than water, or was that blood is thicker than water?...anyway). So maybe those Mazda engineers aren't so smart after all, if they went to all that trouble to design that crazy intake plenum to get no air. Maybe you are better off without it; I just always like to step back for a minute and think about why something that obviously took time/money was done. I was just looking at the snorkel on my Pontiac and it's basically stuck into the back of the headlight...where you would think there would be no air. But with that car, I have inhaled water from driving on the highway and going thru puddles that threw up a huge spray, so it appears that water can get there.



I like to think that engineering decisions are made for good reasons, and that your intake plenum was designed to make the car work better. It's possible, for instance, that they had to put that plenum on because they weren't passing emissions, and needed to drop the intake air temp by 1 degree and put that restrictive device on there to make sure they pulled more outside air than engine compartment air. At the end of the day, a specification is a specification, and you have to do what you have to do to meet it, no matter how goofy the solution might be. I'm sure they did it for a reason, whether the reason is important to the end user or not is another story.
 
Accumulator said:
Bust the bubbles in the least aggressive way possible. Clean up the rust a little so it's not loose and then treat with the converter. You might want to consider having the underside (the area we're talking about) reshot next spring. I've had that done before (just the underside, not the top) and it worked out well.



Getting another hood would just give you a second hood with similar issues so I'd probably just put up with its problems for a good long time ;)
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Agreed. However, I'd say you could probably re-shoot the underside yourself. I've ordered aerosol cans before and managed a somewhat successful job of primer/base/clear... just let it cure for about a week, hit it with some 2000 grit, compound/polish, and you're golden. :dance
 
I completely agree that these things are there for a reason. I too, always look at things that way before altering them in any way. But IMO, the manufacturers often put resonators on the intake system for the purpose of quieting the engine noise. Most people don't want to have a lot of engine noise, whether cruising at 3000RPM on the freeway or otherwise.



I don't mind the extra sound. There is definitely more sound production, so the resonator box was accomplishing the sound deadening for sure. My thought is that it would keep the intake system from sucking in a lot of dirt also, since the inlet is tucked in behind the hood. It would be tough for dirt to make its way in there.
 
Shiny Lil Detlr- Yeah, depending on the location and severity of the corrosion it might not be a big deal at all.



White95max- OK, as long as you've considered the stuff-getting-ingested thing. Actually, a little rain water getting in won't hurt a thing. My old-school cars used to suck a bit of water in through their hoodscoops and it was like cheapie water injection.
 
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