Figured I would post some build pictures up here. I've got an RA1 hood and purchased the kit for a RAII. I had seen pictures where someone modified it to work and thought I would give it a try.

After placing it where that guy did (basically right on top of the radiator cover), I'm not sure what he was thinking. The hood practically closed right on the filter and any air coming in from the front vents would hit the side of the filter box before anything else. If the vents in the hood were horizontal instead of vertical it might have worked (the hood would look pretty stupid though!)

At that point in time I had the MAP based TPI in there so I mounted the RAII box hanging off the back of the radiator cover. I had to invert one of the rear corners to clear the AC compressor, but without a MAF it fit well and basically ran right to the throttle body. I never got a chance to finish it before I started the LS1 swap.

With the LS1 in place and it's required MAF sensor, the old location was not going to give enough room. That and the LS1 intake sits lower and my angles were off any way. I tried several filter baskets trying to find something that would work with my setup, but finally decided to make my own.

I mounted the radiator cover in place and cut everything but the top ring off the RAII filter box. I put the ring on the radiator cover at the angle I wanted and used some JB quick to hold it in place. I then screwed the ring in place. I took an LS1 Whisper lid and cut out the MAF inlet and curve to flat area. I hooked that up to the MAF on the engine to get the angle right. I used some metal tape to hold all three pieces together and removed them from the car. I cut and shaped the lower part of the RAII box to fit back in place as close as possible. Once I had the rough shape I started fiber-glassing them all together and then used filler to smooth it all out.

It was getting hard to make the box to radiator cover look right, so I wound up ordering a new radiator cover and cutting the old one down to where it was just a mount that used the front two bolts. I think it turned out pretty well and actually will get some air into it too!

Kevin D.

 

Painting..

 

Installed...

You can see more of the finished LS1 install here:

LS1 done thread.

 

Looks great! You've got one of the best looking swaps I've seen.

 

FWIW, if you have any good local tuners near you, you can switch to a speed density setup with the stock ls1 computer. that would further make the intake cleaner than what it is!

also, can you post up some pictures or a write up of how to do that? im going with a RA1 hood with my lt1 intake conversion and would need to do something similar i bet. good job!

 

Yeah I looked at the !MAF tuning, but no one's close enough to be able to handle the minor tweaking that takes.

The above pics and info is about all I have right now. Feel free to shoot me some questions when you get to that point.

Kevin D.

 

sweet!!! someday ill do the same thing, thats the second 92 firebird conv with an ls1 in it!