When i started my Camaro project the air cleaner and engine compartment needed some help. I wanted to have a Stock appearing(sleeper) type set up but i wanted to use a cold air setup. I always loved the twin air cleaner box used on the TPI cars so i thought that would be a good start.

I had a 89 Chevy truck air cleaner laying around but there was a few problems in using it here. 1) The lid was too tall 2) The snorkle was oval and it came out and went to a 45 degree angle.

So what i did was eliminate the lid and made my own. I used a flat sheet of metal and welded a 5/16 lip around it. I used the bottom of paint can for the recessed area for the wing nut.

After i created the lid i still needed to be lower to clear the Stock hood. So i cut out the center of lid and recessed the lip over the carb. This lowered another 5/8". This put the back of the air cleaner very close to the distributor so i cut out and made a recessed area in the rear to clear the spark plug wires.

The factory snout was cut off and i used a 3 1/2" piece of exhaust tube and formed/welded the metal to the air cleaner. This gave me the easiest way to use 3" PVC pipe and couples to connect to the factory TPI air box.

I have a 2" K&N filter in the cleaner now but this setup could use the twin air cleaners in the air box instead. Not sure which way would work better but I might have to test that sometime.

I should have took pics as i was making it but i got too involved in trying to finish it. I used the factory 5.7 liter decal and painted with base/clear coat.

 

That turned out surprisingly well. Nice fab job!

 

thanks.....i wanted a stock clean look but to some it looks original until i take it all apart and show the welds and the pvc pipe( which its painted semi-gloss black in the pic.

I guess fooling some people is better then having it look badly...lol

 

Looks interesting. Seems like a dual snorkel lid would flow better?

How come your pics are labled ebay??

 

I wondered about the dual snorkle setup too. But the inlets seemed smaller on some of the ones i'd come across. Not sure which would flow better, 2 smaller or 1 larger inlet. This was the easiest way i figured how i could tie it into the factory air box. To be honest, unless i test different air cleaners I wouldn't know what would work the best. I did want a cold air system so i wouldnt be bringing all that hot engine compartment air during this summer heat.

The pics are labeled "ebay" because i downloaded these pics along with parts i was selling on ebay and they all went to same folder. I just never thought to change the name for each pic.

I will post some new pics with the cleaner off the car to show more and a view with more of the car included.

 

Thats kinda like my set up but yours looks a little better

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/fabr...ircleaner.html

 

Here are more detailed pics of the air cleaner. This shows the recessed area to clear the distributor and wires, the inside around the carb base where i cut out 5/8" to lower it and the area inside the inlet. I left the welds showing to give that "raw" look to show that it was homemade. I can clean it up alot more and perhaps help airflow but i'll do that later on. Then there is the scratch built lid showing to paint can base and the welds along the lip.

 

Heres the last 3 pics....

 

That looks good, I love the diy air cleaner.

 

Nice job

 

Cool. Nice work!

 

here's my ugly and dirty version of the same concept..
stock Camaro housing with the stock snorkel removed and the hole plugged with a piece of sheetmetal i cut out of the front of the housing for the late 70's car or truck snorkel that i attached to the front with self tapping screws..



it's ugly, but it works well enough to keep the carb almost too cold..

 

how much time and money went into this?

 

That looks really nice...

 

Well i can tell you what i have in it for parts and money.
1) left over 89 chevy truck air cleaner base..truck was parted out.
2) upper lid was cut from a wrecked Dodge hood(free)
3) piece of 3 1/2 exhaust pipe and various metal use(scrap laying
around)
4) 3inch white PVC pipe from Lowes( $6)
5) 2 rubber 3inch couplers from Lowes ($8 each)
6) Summit reusable(K&N) 2inch air filter ($22)
7) TPI Camaro twin air filter box ($75 off ebay)
8) Chevy bowtie decal and 5.7 liter H.O decal ($22 at Carlisle
GM nationals)
9) left over Black paint and clearcoat used for the dech stripes on my
Camaro


As far as time goes, i didnt keep track since i worked on it on and off in the evenings. I would guess around 4 hours straight for the cutting and welding and a maybe around 2 hours for the "body work" and painting. Not too bad considering i wanted a Stock appearance and didnt want to pay close to $200 for a custom setup.

 

I love it; FUNCTIONAL!

 

I think it looks great personally.

Question is - compared to a dual snorkel L69 DS air cleaner (which pulls pressurized air from above the headlights), does the iroc style snorkel & intake pull more cold air in?

 

in a standard air cleaner there is a plate inside the air cleaner behind the snorkel that seems to keep the air coming smoothly .

 

The original air cleaner had a heat riser type flap in it that was connected to the exhaust manifold. I'm thinking it was used to help warm up the engine on colder days. That was eliminated when i cut off the oval snorkle section.

I wondered if a type of Tornado insert would work better if it was placed in the outlet of the factory airbox.

It would be nice to test the difference between a dual snorkel setup, my set up and a standard open air cleaner to see which works best. I'm not sure what the CFM's for the factory TPI engines were, but i figured if it worked well on a TPI IROC then it should work for my mild engine. If someone were to have a more powerful engine then this might not be the ticket. Athough I have seen similar airbox setups on the new Camaros and they are pulling alot more power. With the TPI airbox, it seems to me it pulls in alot of air since its coming from the airdam which is drawn in front of the radiator. Does that seem to makes sense?

My engine is a 355 with 9.6 compression with ported 305 heads on 93 octane, an Edlebrock dual plane intake with a 600cfm carb, 1 5/8 headers with a 3" Edlebrock exhaust( 2 1/2 duals out the muffler), a Summit 262/272 advertised duration .420/.442 lift camshaft. Compared to the stats of other crate engines and from estimated Dyno simulations this engine should be in the mild range of about 315 horses give or take a few.

I wanted a mild street setup with good power and good economy for now and i think this works great. If i decide to go bigger on the engine then i might have to consider a way to bring in more air for that setup.

 

That sounds like a really good set up . Was wondering why you had to use 93 on a 9.6 compression engine . But the iron heads and not much overlap probably puts your cylinder pressure high . I wonder what a compression test would show . I had a 305 when i was young and had a RV cam in it , it had like 185 psi . I think 150 psi is common for stock engines .
Anyway I was looking for a picture of that plate behind the snokel and couldn't find one so I guess they are uncommon . Your air cleaner looks awesome tho ! I would buy one of those

 

I run 93 octane for piece of mind actually. I have known others that used the 305head/350block combos and they always seemed to have detonation and poor performane on lower octane gas. To be honest I don't know what pistons they had, deck height, head gasket thickness and if the heads have been shaved. They could have been running a much higher compression ratio and didnt do their math as to what gas to use. My Grand Prix GTP with the supercharged 3800 requires higher octane so i'm used to grabbing the higher octane gas.

If i get ahold of another air cleaner base i could make another one. I'll have to figure out a way to make some pre-fabricated parts to cut down on the time since this was custom and was pieced together.