Project V8 RX-7: Part 12 - The Intake & Finishing Touches

Project V8 RX-7: Part 12 - The Intake & Finishing Touches

by Jeff Naeyaert

Welp, the last day of Project V8 RX-7 Week is upon us!  If you’re a rotary zealot or Vh8er and we’ve been pissing you off all week your suffering is almost over!  (For a little while at least.)  

We saved building our intake 'til the end because we were waiting on our KRC power steering pump, which may have obstructed the intended placement of our filter—directly in front of the driver’s side head like we had on our LS1 setup before.  We didn’t have power steering then, so it wasn’t a problem. 

Our intake setup from the ol' LS1 days (you can tell it's old cuz of the sepia tone) with the filter right where our KRC power steering pump lives now.

Now all of a sudden we’re left with little where else to go—maybe bent off to the right side?  Complicating things our E-ROD installation instructions stipulate 2 requirements that must be met for proper engine performance and more importantly, CARB certification.  They are 1) the induction system where the MAF is mounted should be 4 inches in diameter and have a minimum straight section 6 inches in length; and 2) ensure that the mounting boss (for the MAF) is at least 10 inches from the throttle body. 

Apart from that, the instructions would suggest that the intake is pretty much open to be built however you choose!  That’s great, because now we don’t have someone else telling us how our intake HAS TO be—which would be the case if the E-ROD kit came supplied with an intake.

The E-ROD kit comes with a dry element filter, the mounting boss for the MAF and the MAF sensor—that’s it.

The instructions say that it is recommended the provided filter be used, but if an alternate filter must be used (presumably because the provided filter is too big) it must be of the dry element variety.  That reads like it’s OK to use a different one, which is good for us!  However, this sorta gray area is where you are most likely going to run into kickback from a CARB referee because they just don’t like gray.  The referee wants a definitive description of what he’s supposed to look for and subsequently find when he does his inspection—nothing should be subjective.  But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  We’ll get to the smog stuff in great detail in a later installment.