AEM Cold Air Intake
Well, the signs weren't good on the way to Simon's, it was chucking it down and all of a sudden there was stationary traffic. But I saw a gap...
It appears that the freak weather had kept some of the 'less experienced drivers' off guard. Bloody Clio drivers. Probably wasn't concentrating, due to doing something ludicrous like taking a picture with both hands while driving.
Anyway, I finally got to Simons, and the first thing he wanted to do was to rip off my bumper, and unlike Simon, we didn't do it by ramming the car into a fox. First things first...
Jacked the car up to make getting into those wheel wells that much easier. You can see the AEM box in the background... please focus on it to take the emphasis away from the horrific paint scratches on the lower front lip of my kit!
Firstly, removed the engine covers. Simon is so quick at this now, by the time the camera came out, he'd cracked them all off!
Now the bumper. We needed to get it off BEFORE the airbox because Simon needs more room to move round the car, the fat b.... Some of the bolts are quite easy to remove...
Others require a little bit more skill :) ...
And some are so well hidden you need to peel back the wheel trims to get to them. Not tricky though, they're very flexible.
Additionally, we had to unscrew the laser jammers because they are screwed into the front of my bumper. Once they were off, a screwdriver into the plastic clips under the headlights, and a short sharp yank later...
The front of the car was naked!
Though we didn't think much of Simon's new rear apron install. :)
OK! Now removing the original air filter.
Simon moved so quickly here you'd think there was a bacon sandwich underneath it. Anyway, a few tugs and a few clips later, the top came off.
Here's the original air filter. Looks to me like a tray of herbal fruit tea bags. No, it really does. If Simon had told me at this point that it WAS a tray of herbal fruit tea bags, I'd have believed him. It turned out to be easier to remove the lid, then the rest of the attachments. All the wires came out and off, including the small vacuum rubber hose. All the loose connections were folded neatly out of the way.
OK. Here's the engine compartment with no air filter. Look at all that space! Quick recon of what's going on in there;
- A1 is the vacuum hose that we cap off later on with the little rubber 'condom' that comes with the AEM kit. We don't need to connect that to the Air intake any more.
- A2 is another once of the wiring looms that was removed. I think. I'll have to confirm that.
- B will mount onto the new AEM unit, as it was previously mounted to the old air filter. If you want to know what it is; it's a thingy (help me out here Simon).
- C is where the air will come in. Big wide hole, even I knew that. Duuuh! We ripped off the original hose and dumped it.
- D is the cooling pipe for the ECU. Shortly after taking the pic we removed it. Not because it needs replacing, but we needed the space to fit the AEM pipe.
- E... OK. Just below E, you'll see a silver metal pipe. This is a pipe for the Aircon system which we don't believe is present on the US systems and GETS IN THE WAY bigtime with fitting the pipe. We didn't realise at this point, but it was the target for much swearing later on!
- And F is a couple of sheets of paper Simon used to keep his tools on. Apparently, on them were written comprehensive installation instructions, but I never saw Simon go anywhere near them for the majority of the process :)
Down the front of the car... oh look, they've kept it wrapped in polystyrene! Bless. Seriously though, that space in front of the wheel guard is where our intake will sit. Notice that by this point Simon has fitted the rubber neck for the intake and removed the ECU cooling port.
Right, time to get the AEM tube out of the box...
I hope you're all wetting yourself as much as I am :)
OK... to get to the next stage took a while. Not that it was a lot of work, just some head-scratching and a lot of shoving.
Basically, that pipe for the aircon I showed earlier on was very difficult to get the pipe round. In this pic, we're fitting the hose clamps for the connection to the air intake. Note the huge metal holes, that's for the air flow meter which we carefully kept attached to the original airbox until we needed it.
This is how the other end of the pipe is positioned. It goes BEHIND the aircon pipe and through the plastic trim, which we had to detach from the plastic undertrays to give us some space to work with. Fitting it was a fiddle, but this was how to do it: with all pipes, connections, and other crap out of the way, we pushed the aem pipe down as far as it went. Then, reaching from the area where the pipe is to emerge, we squeezed it back and behind the pipe. It didn't need a lot of force, just a lot of fiddling to get the exact right position. At this stage it appears that the pipe will bump into a large number of bodyparts; don't worry, it's a lot more secure when finally fitted.
This is not the prettiest part of my car by a long chalk. At this point it became clear to us that we were going to have to cut the trim and the front wheel area to make way for the pipe. "No cutting required for install" - my arse!
The rubber mount that the AEM pipe sits on, that attaches to the chassis just next to the airbag sensor, should be a nice tight fit. Simon then reattached the ECU cooling, fitted the little rubber condom to the vacuum attachment, and reattached the part marked "A1" in the diagram a few pages up to the metal bracket on the AEM pipe. What you can see here is one of the 'finesse' jobs required - fitting the MAFS (the air flow sensor). Sod this up and you've got a big bill on your hands. It costs a fortune to replace.
It screws into the pipe at the point marked earlier. Be very careful with the screws, they require a weirdo sized imperial allen key to fit them. Another US pit fall!
Check that face of concentration... also, see the 2 points g above? What do they fit to. Exactly, no idea. The manual states they attach to the CCV, carbon something valve. Well, in European cars, this is at the back of the vehicle, so we don't need this. However, we DO need to fit something to it to seal it, so what better than a bit of bright blue hose to freshen up that install. :)
Notice we've also tie-wrapped the vacuum hose to another hose as it was flapping about a bit. Check that neatly fitted MAFS onto the AEM pipe as well.
Oh dear, we've lost the screwdriver. ;)
Now, with the hose fitted above to seal the intake pipe, it's time to seat the actual air filter (or 'lamp shade' as my girlfriend called it) to the area in front of the tyre. For a neat fit, the plastic shields MUST be cut away. We did a little at a time with some diamond-strength metal cutters (!) to make sure there was enough space and so that it didn't rub or knock when driving. Once we made that cut, we fitted the air filter.
And here's the pipe attached to the filter once it was all replaced. You can see the filter through the gaps in the plastic shield. A really good install this, I was hugely chuffed. Once we got to this level, nothing was rattling. Simon is a god. Well, he's almost a god. When we tried it out by starting the engine, he revved the throttle from the cable at the engine, and the Clifford unit locked the doors. Thank god the window was open, we would have been utterly screwed!
And there we have it, all done. Light was fading fast, but it was a cracking speed. We started at 7:10pm, stopped briefly to chat to Whrrr who was collection some 1.0 farrad caps (hello Mark!), and finished at about 9:15pm. So a 2 hour install, probably doable in under 1hr 45 if we didn't stop to take piccies. That said, we needed a few bits that didn't come with the kit; like a hose to seal the CCV ports (with clamps), and a US sized allen key for the MAFS screws.
There is a short video of the final install that will appear on this site in the next few days.
And just to add; on the drive back, nothing rattled, the CEL light never came on, and it seemed as good as I hoped it would be.
Cheers Simon!
Stephen.
