Air induction for the early Ultras

Hey all,

I noticed my air intake on my '94 Ultra has a bunch of hollowed out shapes that connect to the main intake just before where it meets the air filter box. On the regular Park Avenues of that year, it's just a straight tube that connects into the air filter box. what are the hollow pieces of plastic for? To quiet the engine more? ...has to do with the supercharger? Just curious

i have a 92 ultra and i didn't notice that before... anyway if your has it and not the supercharged one then it must be related for sur..

either way, put a cone filter on it.. you'll love the sound it makes at wideopen throttle :) sounds like a circular saw whining lol and it scares away the rice :)

plus the engines breath better too

Deadring

Are you speaking of the black plastic over the intake manifold? If so then it is an 'acoustic shield' for engine noise.

But definately any rerouting for the intake ducting is a big bonus as opposed to buried behind a headlight.

like a 3 inch diameter straight pipe with a p-flow high flowing filter breathing nice cold air :)

Deadring

Actually it's the air pipe connector that goes out from the air filter box and sticks out just behind the left headlight housing to suck in the air. It's about maybe 10" long. Deadring knows what i'm talking about. :smile:

Anwho I took the air pipe connector off from the air filter box last night and now there's a hole in the box where the air sucks in. Boy big mistake!!! When i gave the car some gas (i didn't floor it) from a stopped position the engine choked and hesitated hardcore. After a couple of tests of doing this i realized that the engine was probably getting too much air and the supercharger was sucking in more than what the engine could handle and that's why it hesitated upon takeoff. Seeing how most of my "fun" street racing is from light-to-light in the city, i don't think putting on a cone filter would do me much good in my case. Now if i was a highway speeder, then maybe the cone would come in handy. :naughty: I'm also a believer of "what comes in, must come out" ...so i could suck in more cold air, then to get the full "effect" i'd have to open up the exhaust more also. That's where the money situation comes in with modifying the exhaust...well at least to me anyway.

So i put the air pipe connector back on to restrict the air flow and it ran good again. So my next step was to cut off some of those "hollowed" shapes from the air pipe connector and make it a straight pipe (that are in the non-Ultra Park Avenues and LeSabres) to allow more air "suction" into the engine instead of the air circulating into the hollow shapes before entering the engine. Well turns out that my car didn't hesitate upon takeoff (like it had did) which was cool, but i noticed that my burnouts were pretty weak. :nono: ...yeah i know, you're never supposed to "drop the hammer" from a dead stop (i'm sure the old timer's on here will yell at me) but when i see Dodge Neon's and minivans doing it, i have to answer the call!

Anyway i ended up gluing the pieces back on the air pipe connector and now i'm back to square one. So word to the wise, if you have a '94 Ultra and are thinking about "modifiying" that piece of plastic....don't do it cause those plastic "hollow" pieces DO make a difference and if you cut them off then you'll get taken off the line everytime with your sputtering engine and your friends will laugh at you with your "3 inch" burnout tire marks, haha.

Actually i came upon this SITE (http://www.superchips.com/html/mainpage/index.htm) last night also and was thinking about putting a chip/modifying the computer in my Buick. Has anyone done that with their PA....had put in a chip or modified their car's computer???

I'm not quite sure what exactly you took off and its relation to your problem, but it is not because the engine is getting too much air. Any additional air that is pulled in is read by the MAF sensor and thus compensated for. Of course this assumes the air flow is laminar (which the screen should take care of) and may explain some of the problem. With that, you can benefit some from a CAI intake system. Most people with supercharged engines seem more pleased with the loud whine that comes with a CAI rather than actual gains.

You are right about "more in more out" but simply adding an intake will be very far from outflowing your stock exhaust system. Most people even with mild modifications see a decrease in "felt" performance when switching to a larger exhaust. This is generally caused by the reduced exhaust velocity associated with having an exhaust system that is too large in relation to the engine output and operational powerband.

There are some chip programming options that are specific to the S1 that many companies that cater to larger audiences aren't familiar with that can add performance. An example of this would the the PCM power management system. Of course there are risks involved in disabling it, but the same goes for any modification. If you like I can explain those risks to you so you can make an informed decision. I'm not sure (doubt because of liability issues) if Superchips gives the option to disable it. There are a few other 'tweaks' that can be done but for the most part they change the behavior of the vehicle and not so much the power. If you're interested in a custom burn shoot me an email and I can put you in touch with someone who can do it for a fraction of the price.

If you all will look at the area behind your driver headlight, you should be able to see a few openings there. I've often pondered running a pipe down below to that opening in the bumper and creating a ram-air setup. Anyone care to explore this?

yeah well i did tests a few things on my 1991 corolla,including a ram air and even aluminium foil air ducts with duck tape all over the place and even a outside temperature sensor placed inside the intake to mesure how much heat you can get in when you try modify the filterbox to get a ram air , when you put a cone filtrer INSIDE the hood beside the radiator and when you put the cone filter OUTSIDE the hood inside the fender below the lights ( this was the best setup for performance)


ram air - good at very high speeds.. at low speeds, the engine had to breath through the long pipe from a stop, it was not that good

cone filter inside - good on days when the temperature is cooler than 60 degrees... it would rock.. as the outside temperature would rise over 70 it would start to make black smoke at wide open throttle and not pull as good. plus MPG would go down


cone filter in the fender - best yet, ALWAYS the cold air thats needed and it would pull it an unholy way... to showe you how much it would pull

with a stock filter i could get it to 105 in fifth

with a cone in the fender the car would get to 110 in fourth gear to the redline and then switch to fifth and get to 120.. and it did this over 2 years... in the end, it's rust that won over and but i still see it on the road from time to time.



on my buick, i seem to have LESS go-go from a stop with a cone filter which is just behind the headlight with a 3 inch pipe from the flexible rubber. but i have more top end, i mean the car will rev faster to 5500 rpm..and with that whining buzz saw screeching sound, the rice are scared and there jaw drops when i passe them and they have there windows down heheheh.


Deadring

If you all will look at the area behind your driver headlight, you should be able to see a few openings there. I've often pondered running a pipe down below to that opening in the bumper and creating a ram-air setup. Anyone care to explore this?

Always a novel idea, however, as a 3rd gen Z28 owner, the stock air induction runs right behind the fog lights, and it gets to be pretty frightening when you see standing water and nowhere to go but through.