I took a sawzall to my SHO the other day

[Qshiplvr]

In an effort to open up my SHO's ability to breathe, I took a sawzall to the mousetrap. I guess it's a variation on the Troxel version of modifying the mousetrap.

My HID projector on the driver side began to go out intermittently, and I found the culprit to be a flaky connection. So, in order to secure everything down tight, I took off the front bumper and figured if I have gone this far, I may as well do something about the intake snorkel. So here is the result:
Before:
After:
Cross section
I used tin snips to cut around the bracket:

 

[GEN 3 SHO FAN]

You made the same project as me on my first years. You can do even better if you remove all the black plastic part starting from the air box to the top of the intake silencer. The place where the tube is passing thru the fender is very restrictive. You probably already saw this link :

http://www.shoforum.com/index.php?threads/bigger-air-box-gen-3-to-gen-4-swap.132983/



On Gen 4 SLO, Ford divide the flow into 2 ways at this place to give more air to motor. Probably because they found out that this point was too restrictive. Rather to pass only thru the fender, another tube is going to the front of vehicule into the motor bay. (Not sure for 2000, but 2001+ for sure.) I havn't not tryed to put this 2001+ tubbing into mine, maybe it will fit. (?) I just put a intake tube from a '91 Crown Vic from the box to the fender.

As you probably rebolted all your parts now, you can retreive the splash guard in front of the driver wheel and unbolt the last bolt if you want to do it.

Good luck,

P.S. It's nice to see a SHO without rust anywhere. (!)

P.S.S. I also remarked that the opening of the saxocone is right under jonction between the driver head lamp and bumper cover and during rain, some (or many) water can fall into this shity saxocone...

 

[Qshiplvr]

I understand your mod advice would give more hp. Unfortunately, I live in CA, and I will fail my next smog visual inspection and not be able to re-register my SHO if I take modifications into the engine bay (at least ones that can be visually detected...I have tried extrude-honing my other cars, which is an excellent way to stealth more airflow while keeping stock appearance). So while I concede that your mod is a better solution, unfortunately due to where I live and drive, I have reached the limit on the mods I can make on airflow (short of extrude-honing).

If I have an opportunity to spend much more money (i.e. save enough cash so I can blow it on the SHO and ignore my other 3 cars), I may try that, however, it will require SUBSTANTIALLY more funds to extrude hone the intake (I think I read on V8sho website it did nothing) and stock exhaust manifold. Due to lacking the head gaskets at a reasonable price, would not be able to take off the heads and have them extrude honed as well, so I am pretty sure I have hit the wall of diminishing returns when it comes to eeking out hp.

 

[GEN 3 SHO FAN]

Sorry I forgot since you're in California.

Maybe you can put a 2001+ intake tube (with 2 ways, one into the fender and another one), not a big cost needed and it's all Taurus parts.

And if you want to go deeper and stay stealth, you can (and I think it's a big bottleneck for this motor too) porterize the surge tank, mostly the enter. The enter have to deal first with a 45-90 degree curve and at the enter EGR and other tubings entering at this precise place restricting the airflow, I manually porterize this part at no cost. On old post talk about 10-15 hp if you porterize the entire surge tank, but no one dyno it.

 

[gamefanatic]

I understand your mod advice would give more hp. Unfortunately, I live in CA, and I will fail my next smog visual inspection and not be able to re-register my SHO if I take modifications into the engine bay (at least ones that can be visually detected...I have tried extrude-honing my other cars, which is an excellent way to stealth more airflow while keeping stock appearance).

Eh... I'm in Cali, and have never failed an inspection...
I totally removed the Sax from my Vulcan, on my first SHO I had just enough to poke through the fender hole, and my latest SHO again has the whole Sax removed. There is no reason they would have to fail you for removal of this part. They might fail you if you installed an aftermarket cone filter that was not CARB (California Air Resource Board) approved. If they said anything about your Sax being removed, move on to the next smog station as that one doesn't understand what they are testing...

You could just cut it just beyond the fender well so that when you go to smog, you can quickly put it back on....

Seriously though, they cannot fail you unless they can prove that your modification affects the metered air flow in a way that would affect the results of the tests, or in the case of the exhaust that it would leak out prior to passing through the "2+" catalytic converters. Our cars are just old enough that they still want to stick the sensor up the tail pipe, but they will find no issues due to a Sax being removed. Newer cars they totally rely on the computer to let them know if anything is wrong.

When modifying your engine with parts not approved by air resource boards supported in California, you can always get a Referee check... http://www.asktheref.org/

I'll get off the soap box here....

 

[98SF19]

I'll get off the soap box here

. . . and I'll get back on it.
Looks like Cali and a few other states are now inclined to ramp up smog/emissions/carbon restrictions/costs even MORE, so hold on to your butts.
Elon saw the writing on the wall and made a genius business decision by pulling out of the economic advisory board, articulating his position to align with those who are now more inclined to get away from IC engines and their political unfavorability. As if Tesla needed help in taking over the automotive world . . .

 

[stephen newberg]

Actually, Tesla needs a lot of help. At the moment the only thing that keeps it afloat is the stock market. Tesla loses, on average, $10,000 US on every car it sells. Its not that they are not interesting machines, just that they cost way more to make then is charged for them on sale. It is going to be worse for the next set attempting to lower the sale point, from what I read.

There are some intrinsic problems with the electric car concept that are simply not solved yet. I am sure that eventually they will be, but I think I will avoid being on the bleeding edge.

pax, smn

 

[98SF19]

Apologies to OP for continuing off-topic . . .
DISCLAIMER: I am a big fan of Musk. He has an amazing life story.
Not sure how the loss mechanism was determined considering the enormous turn-out of deposits for the current production run of cars yet to be made, but there are always issues with new tech, and new challenges will arise, including acquisition of capital. Though the low density of charging stations will increase over time, there will likely still be constraints of high charging time and limited vehicle range into the immediate future. There will be solutions for these as well.

My last comment above was implying on-going political support for electric and hybrid cars. We've seen "renewable energy" businesses, propped up purely by public funds, gobble up loads of subsidies in recent years only to leave the taxpayer holding a huge bill for something that was never realized. The resulting fallout exposed the corruption and nepotism that created it. Well now we have someone whose sails don't seem so full of political winds (as opposed to Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc.) but is motivated by objective ambition. His decision yesterday should not be seen as a deviation from this. He's well aware that government is a necessary evil and can't be avoided (NASA, NTSB, DMV, FCC, etc.) but with regards to green energy, Tesla stands to do with the private sector what many thought was only supposed to be done by big government using taxpayer dollars.

 

[stephen newberg]

Its not about the new one, which has unknown costs so no idea how it will do, but rather about production to date on current models. Actually, they are doing better than they used to, as a year or two ago they were losing $14.000 US per car sold.

I have no problems with Musk. He is a visionary and has done well. but I still want nothing to do with the tech until it is considerably more mature and has more infrastructure built up.

pax, smn

 

[Qshiplvr]

Sooooo...getting back to the original topic, I decided to err on the safe side, and whenever anyone opens my hood, they see a stock airbox (with K&N panel filter, but they won't open the box, just check to see it is stock and it is intact) with tube going into inner fender wall and that's that.

Without a CARB EO number, I would fail visual with anything resembling cone or CAI aftermarket system, and being the risk avoider that I am, I am content to sawzall and be happy.

 

[stephen newberg]

That should work fine. The 'Porterization' that I did to bring in cold air via a 4" rad hose to the air box looks so stock that it has never been questioned by the various emissions inspections people over the years. And it works just fine to deliver cold air in greater volume than possible from the sax.

pax, smn

 

[Qshiplvr]

Stephen: I came back from the junkyard with the bottom portion of the airbox from a 2001 Taurus. Gen 3 SHO fan said he used the hose from a '91 Crown Vic to connect this bottom portion of the box thru the fender wall. You said you used a 4" inner diameter radiator hose. I couldn't find a '91 Crown Vic in the junkyard to pick. If I am to install this bottom portion of the box, I still need to connect it thru the fender wall. Where did you buy such a large radiator hose?

Also, while I am thinking about this, perhaps I am thinking wrong, but whether I use a '91 Crown Vic hose, a 4" inner diameter radiator hose, or just keep the bottom of the saxacone intact on my current bottom stock airbox, wouldn't my limiting cross section be the hole in the inner fender? I am at a loss what gain I would be attaining by swapping out the bottom of the airbox for a deeper filter, but still be restricted to the same cross section of inner fender. Am I not seeing something here?

 

[stephen newberg]

I got my rad hose at a truck supplies place. They have them for tractor/trailer trucks. I kept the standard air box and cut off the sax at the air box, leaving a lip of about 3/4" to attach the rad hose to and then gave it a straight shot out to the inner wheel well via one of the cutouts. I used 3 stainless screws to attach the hose to the airbox and then put a stainless rad hose over the connection just for looks, as the screws really hold it all together.

The sax itself is the restriction. It narrows down to maybe 2 inches at a couple of points as well as having its center muffle section. There were some numbers on air flow through it and it was about half what the engine could take in while measurements through a 4" ABS piece to the inner wheel well was the full amount the engine could handle. You can find the numbers somewhere over on V8SHO.com. There might be a photo of my rad hose version instead of ABS there also somewhere. I posted it at one point when someone asked.

pax, smn

 

[GEN 3 SHO FAN]

Just an additionnal info.

The bottom of the box have a 3 inches opening (or something near), it will be difficult to plug something with 4 inches to it.

This is probably not the setup of Newberg but it might give an idea.



I recently saw in scrapyard that F-250 with turbo diesel motor have pretty cool aluminium hoses (2) for the turbos intake and they are easy to unbolt.

 

[Qshiplvr]

Gen 3 SHO fan:

The pic you posted above is different than the one you posted on your original post 04/16/17. In the pic above, the object poking thru the fender wall is shiny silver and appears to be made out of metal. In the original post, it appears that this part is flexible hose. Are you able to post a picture of the bottom of your airbox? I would like to see how you made the connection.

vs

 

[GEN 3 SHO FAN]

The newer photo isn't mine, it's the end of Newberg setup or something like it. I don't want to put an oil filter there because it will become dirty fast. I put this photo in the case you want something more high tech.

If you have difficulty to find a crown vic, you can go thru truck area at scrapyard and watch truck intakes. I found my 2nd there (actualy the one you see on photo is coming from a dodge pick up IIRC.

The tube is keeping there because it's skeezed between the fender and the box, I let the the hose clamp on the box end because it's let think that it was factory made (but the clamp itself isn't really tight solidly). The lips the box have an angle that make difficult to tight the hose clamp.