Lexmex

Nope, my beloved Toro Negro (black bull) got a modification to the lower part of her intake system this afternoon. Let's take a look from start to finish.

If you want to take a look now, go to bottom of page 6 of my cardomain page, though I will be posting some photos here in forum that I won't be putting up on cardomain.

Lexmex

As you saw in the first picture, 2 tubes. Let me show how I go to that. I had earlier made a trip to Home Depot to buy some PVC.

First of all I had to partially remove the plastic covering on the front left wheel well, there about 7 screws I removed.

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Pulling the covering away, reveals the old lower intake.

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After removing duct tape and plastic ties, this is the last time the bullhorn will be on my RX300.

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This is what is left. Just to the right of that sensor is an area that I describe on the last photo of page 6 on my car domain site. This is where the air for your engines enters for all of you with OEM air intake systems (a.k.a. you haven't junked your airbox yet).

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Then I removed the steel piece shown below. The other tube where the MAF sensor sits on is the aluminum piece originally made by Weapon-R for their Dragon Intake.

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I then removed this two-piece thingy here. This joins the steel piece and the lower air intake/bullhorn. It sits underneath the fusebox.

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This is how the steel piece and this piece fit together.

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Now, this is something I really wanted to show you. This was my original design I had in store for today. Unfortunately, this wouldn't fit. Neither the white piece nor the black curved piece attached to it on the right of the photo. The reason behind is a lack of space behind the headlight. Why I wanted this design and how I had to do a consolation design will become apparent in a moment.

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One thing that you do need to do if working with this is to remove unscrew the bolts holding the fusebox in. There are two on each side and one inside (you have remove the top of the fusebox (there are plastic clamps on the side) and underneath it you will find access to the third screw). It is possible to ram the plastic pieces under the box, but a bigger PITA if you ask me.

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Another shot from underneath. This is when I was trying to fit the piece I really wanted up on top and it wasn't working out.

The blue arrows show where air for the engine enters normally on an OEM system. It actually starts through the same little bumper holer where I put my bullhorn.

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So now comes for the compromise. These are the parts I have to work with. I actually also (not shown) have a long 3 meter piece of 3 inch diameter tubing. However, I have cut some of it to make the pieces shown at the bottom. One piece is 9 inches long (for left tube) and the other one is 8.5 inches (for right tube).

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And here it he design I used. We'll talk about it in the upcoming photos where I do some 360 shots.

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Here it is after I painted it.

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Here it is with the bullhorn.

The bullhorn has a 4.5 inch opening that goes into a 3 inch opening later at the top (see next photo). Meanwhile, my new lower intake has two 3 inch diameter pipes, for a total of 6 inches!