Spent an hour or maybe two hacking my old stock intake tube, cut it right after the vac ports, and also cut all the lines that were on the side of it that go down to the little canister. Zip tied all that shit cleanly under the new setup. Then I attached an elbow with a coupling and 2 clamps, bored out the old rubber elbow and clamped it on, then attached the MAF, and the filter. Looks alot better, is much larger, sounds nicer. I know its getting more air, haven't taken it out on the street yet, but she is running nicely.

Everything you need to build this is probably less than $50

Tools: Dremel w/cut off wheels, Screwdrivers, zip ties, and a steady hand.

Thougts?!

Let me get a picture of mine...you might cry at the super simplicity of my air intake.

DIAF! This was a beautiful fab job, involving the boring of rubber with a dremel, the inhalation of the subsequent smoke, heater hose emissions technology, hacking of metal tubes and whatnot, and a some other shit that is forgotten because of said inhalation of smoke.


Does your intake have all the stock vacuum line connections?!

better than what I can do lol

For the first elbow, I did exactly what you did, I cut mine JUST after the little flange thing on the elbow. I dont have a recent pic online atm damnit, Ill get one when I get home though, and you will be suprised.

Thanks, at least you don't come in here talking about simplicity and blowing my mind.


just kidding xano



So yours is shorter? Just stock pipe to maf to cone?

Not shorter, but straighter. I was just saying that I did the same idea to keep the stock vacuum lines without having to dick with adapters.

And I gotta blow your mind though, cause my filter is awesome, and since im in Winter country, I get a Cold air intake half the year, and a ram air the other half

Ok so its stock, to straight pipe, to maf, to cone?

Almost, its stock to maf to pipe to cone, and the cone is a metal mesh one with a velocity stack in it.

Either way, I like the simplicity of a straighter pipe, you'd notice just as much gains without the random squigle going on there.

If you ran a bit of pipe straight off the cut elbow (which has more volume than a 3" pipe, so its definitely worth keeping that and using it instead of some other aftermarket elbow), you'd notice it ends the filter up in about the same spot.

I found an OLD pick of my intake setup here. This is pre-velocity stacked filter, and pre extra bit of pipe to stretch it farther away from the engine and exhaust mani. This will give you an idea of what i did though.

For sure, this was just using shit I had laying around. I wanted to make it less squiggly.

nothing wrong with that at all ive done it before too.

You know those tennis ball tubes, that hold like 3 or 4 tennis balls and are vacuum sealed? I took one of those, cut off the ends and used it as a clear intake tube for a while, because i didn't have anything better and wanted to get the filter away from the engine.

oh my god. i'll back here later in the day after i take a picture of MY intake job. it's the perfect example of "wtf do i do if i'm keeping the AC in place". get ready for laughs in t-minus 9 hours.

i'll tell you what you do, you do what I did with my OLD VG s12 for the longest time. Leave all the piping the same, remove the airbox from the MAF, and put the filter off the MAF with all the same tubing .

No but seriously, on a VG car with AC still in, you'd almost have to run the tubing the exact same route as stock, or possibly wedge it between the strut tower and compressor very very tightly.

Not enough room for me. With the MAF adapter, hose coupler and filter, i'd need to cut a hole in the hood. The Apexi power intake is.. well. Big intake is biiiiiiiiiiig.

I'll take pictures during my lunch break but I'll have to post them from home since I keep my data cable there.

You should have just done what I did with the stock box, cut the top off the metal box, leaving only the filter and lower part. The entire top can be chopped off. It sounds meaner than any cone ever will. I will have to take pics.

my box was all messed up (that's sig material right there, gents) with cracks and the clamshell wouldn't close properly. so my MAIN reason was to have a functioning intake and resolve all my weird idling issues. the secondary reason was all the good press the apexi intake has gotten. it sounds VERY awesome at 3 to 4000 RPM but that's just a bonus.

Straight pipe with one bend FTW.

Some more I picked out of the "Engine Bay" thread stickied in "Club Gallery":











yeah I couldn't find that in your build thread, but it definitely reflects the K.I.S.S. method and still looks good.

i used a stock 13b intake pipe. it fits perfect and has an internal diameter of 90mm
ill post up a pic of mine when i get some batteries
picture it on the s12
but for now, you get the idea

that looks good. how maneuverable is it?

its a rubber accordion pipe, so you can move it almost anywhere and its already plumbed with more holes then you need

but its fits in the s12 about the same as the stock 13b(no bends)

I like the sound of that! Thanks for enlightening us.

Mine looks identical to demonic's, but reverse the MAF and pipe section. I wanted tubing between the filter and maf, and the TB and maf, to get a good flow going into the pipe before it hit the wires.

Here is what you do when you want to keep your AC:





also visible: my MSD Blaster which is ALSO held up by zipties.

lol @ zip ties! they're awesome!

I love show and tell! I took these a couple of minutes ago so they're updated. Mind, the MAF is a z31 so I didnt have to use an adapter.


Yes, zip ties hold my shroud on. Better than the mix of screws that were on there before!

It's cleaner than I had it before but still kinda ghetto rigged. It works fine and that's all that matters!

Not to get too off topic, but, are we able to use z32 MAFs at all. Nissan buddy gave me one since he doesnt need it anymore. He's looking toward toyota or posssibly a s12.


Edit:I also had a MSD Blaster you can barely see in the second picture... Hid it well under the cone.

wait, what?



i can see it


also, i'd like to know who else besides myself was able to keep their AC. i think i'm the only one but i'm not positive.

86' z31 maf and ecu on my car. Direct replacement with no mods. 86 used the same o2 sensor as we did.
I had AC in my car but decided to get rid of it. My setup was exactly the same, just the piping was wedged between the compressor and the strut tower. Might have an old pic somewhere....


Nope. Damn.

er, i meant the not having to use an adapter bit. does the z31 maf have a flange on the end of it?

Nope, the z31 was a pipe to pipe fit. Kinda weird since the z32 maf is a pipe to flange fitment. But yeah, as you can see, the maf is a pipe to pipe fitment, 3" I think. fits very well. That's why most member arent sure if the 86' ecu and maf is an improvement from stock, as some think it is tuned more "aggresive", but the maf makes for easy cone fitment.

You can find both for 50 a piece or maybe even cheaper. Look around.

It is too damn hot down here in paradise to be running around w/o AC, I am doing a custom Carbon fiber tube with air-box so I can run a paper filter and not worry about the oiled cone issue.

Peace, Wolf

That's what my old vg setup looked like.

I have a modified stock airbox that sounds better than a Cone, uses drop in filters, and mounts in stock location.

the z31 maf is round on both sides. its 2.5inch on both sides i think.

while on the subject, does anyone know where to get a 2.5" maf adapter instead of the popular 3" ones?

My intake is more better!

Not a VG though.

I would try to get rid of one of those bends, try to keep it as straight as possible and least amount of bends.
Also bigger isn't always better, if you have a huge intake pipe, you'll lose some intake velocity and drop torque. It probably wouldn't be noticable, just something to keep in mind.

@redleader36 - As far as I know, no one makes a 2.5" adapter, since nearly ALL cone filters are 3".
May I ask why you need 2.5"?

z31 had the airbox in front of the radiator, but the maf was in the engine bay.

Yeah didn't have a straight piece on me at the time of the creation. This was made from parts in my garage not purchased lol. I did however come across a free piece of straight piping that I will be using soon.

this thread is pretty good for ideas. i'll be redoing my setup sometime soon now that i own a house that has a garage.

on the subject of MAF adapters and homeownership, i'm going to be taking a trip to a hobby store to get some acrylic panels for a neat design idea. i remember once reading a DIY MAF adapter article at some website a while back. a guy made one out of two different pieces of acrylic and drilled some holes. seemed very easy. i might try it!

because my cone filter is 2.5" . It was hard enough to find an orange cone filter, and now it seems difficult to adapt it to work my my s12. i may just switch to '86 z31 maf/ecu

Where the heck did you find a 2.5" filter? I found one that K&N make, but it's for a lawn tractor!

Does it really need to be orange?

um . . advance auto
well, not really. its the same one as advance sells for $38, but i got it off ebay for $6.

it looks like this:


and it's the girlfriend's car and she wanted orange . .

really, this filter has a 3" flange coming off it and it has a rubber coupler adapting down to 2.5". i suppose i could special order a 3" orange coupler to match a 3" maf adapter, but the intake squeezes down to less than 2.5" later on anyway.

The Z31 mafs are all 3 1/8" OD and aprox. 2 3/4" ID.

Red, thats the filter my S12 is rocking. Only one I found with a velocity stack inside it that was fairly cheap. Its definitely better than most cheapo ones i've ran before (cant say its better at filtering though)

Any gain you might have seen is lost with the extra two turns you added and all the restrictive accordion type tubing. That stuff is the biggest power robbing part of any intake.

As for breathing and turbulence, the more air you can get to the runners, those last few inches of the intake system, the better. Velocity does not pick-up or matter till the runners, so you want to let the engine breath easier. Try a little experiment: go get yourself a standard drinking straw (the thin one that is like 1/4") and get a Mickey D's straw, you know the bigger type. If you can find one of those bendy straws for the small type, all the better. Now put the small one in your mouth and breath in through it, now switch to the larger one and breath in again. Easier, huh? Now, cut the small straw down to about two inches and try the experiment again leaving the larger straw the original length. About the same now huh? You can play around with length until you find equilibrium. If you have a bendy one you can play with the acoustic qualities of the straw. The sound you are hearing is turbulence and it is to be avoided at all costs. Vortices are good on the exterior of the car to energize the boundary layer but bad when it comes to flow inside a tube, there you want to keep things as laminar as possible. Do not believe any of the "Tornado" products that "promise" better performance, that is all bullshit. Remember, there is no truth in advertising, especially in automotive markets, drill that into your heads.

OK boys and girls. What two (2) things does this little experiment tell you? This will count towards your final grade at the end of your build, so put on your thinking caps...

There is also a harmonic resonance of the intake system that will mostly affect the sound you hear. Poorly designed systems will whistle, again turbulence. So if yours whistles you are being laughed at by those who know. A little whoosh-ish sound is fine but if your system starts to whistle Dixie? Correct it.



Peace, Wolf "Mr. Wizard" Dilworth

believe me, i know it's not the best way. i had a good reason for installing an aftermarket intake. i've explained it in other threads but you may not have seen them. my stock air box's clamshell would not close properly and had cracks in it. it was the main cause of my car's horrible idling issues at the time. installing that apexi filter sorted out the idling issues. at this point i just want to get the car running properly, i could care less about power gains.

thank you for all of your insight though. most of your posts here contain very valuable information.

Phweew! I am glad to here, you did not think it was going to help performance. I too am sorting out my engine bay and will get it running with the stock plumbing just to confirm the engine build went well. I have a large portion of the exhaust system done now and still have not fired the engine. Tomorrow will be excellent weather-wise, however, I will be busy doing some machine work to fix a problem with the "Pussy Blaster".

Thanks for the bump on my posts. Head swelling as I type... <G>

Peace, Wolf

Obviously not quite finished, but how about dual intake pipes and an ARC induction box.

This was what I did yesterday, it cost about $75 cause I got ripped off at the welder's...




The elbow is from the bottom of the stock VG intake tube that used to connect to the MAF. That's why it's so long. I had to remove the charcoal canister and all the old stock airbox brackets to make it fit. Oh well, it's not like I need it or anything.

Yeah, the welder did not weld anything that I can see. unless the little elbow on the side is what they did?

They saw you coming. I would of done that for $25.00, basic shop fee.