check out my "homemade" power pipe!

cenok is family

15 Year Member
Jun 25, 2003
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Norman, Ok
i said in my other thread that i was making my own power pipe because i couldn't see spending $185+shipping for a piece of tubing and some rubber elbows. well i finished it today, aside from putting a filter on the end of it, but i have a K&N cone filter coming in the mail. it's a 3.5" pipe.

cost of supplies:

mandrel bent 3.5" aluminum tube = $42
two 3.5" black silicone 90* elbows = $48.97
K&N cone filter = $21.24

total cost = $112.21

i saved myself a good $70 - $80 piecing together my own setup and it looks just as good, if not better, imo.

i modeled it off of the afm 3.5" N/A pipe AF-0104c, but mine doesnt have as sharp of a bend, and i put my MAF sensor in the fender with the filter...

first, here's the afm for comparison:
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here's mine:
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what do you guys think? :D
 
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Cool...it always seems better when you're able to make it yourself. :nice:

Now...next thing you need to do is get the pressure washer and the purple power out under that hood and clean the mess up, or promptly smear a combination of mud, bacon grease and Ex-Lax all over that shiny new intake pipe, Cobra manifold and MSD distributor to make it match the rest of your engine bay. :)
 
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thanks a lot guys!

Cool...it always seems better when you're able to make it yourself. :nice:

Now...next thing you need to do is get the pressure washer and the purple power out under that hood and clean the mess up, or promptly smear a combination of mud, bacon grease and Ex-Lax all over that shiny new intake pipe, Cobra manifold and MSD distributor to make it match the rest of your engine bay. :)

haha yeah i know, that's definitely on the agenda. whats sad is i've had the motor out of the car twice and i never even TOUCHED the bay. i'm gonna try that tire foam idea i read about in grey5.0beast's little brother's thread.
 
Did you bend the tube yourself, or did you buy it preformed from a supplier?

I dig it. You should paint/powder coat the aluminum, I don't typically trust bare metal unless its stainless steel, especially if the car gets exposed to the elements.

You should post dimensions... I bet others would like to do the same with their cars. A write up might make a good Tech sticky. :cheers:
 
Very nice.I got my MAC CAI for $40.00 off Ebay last year.Deals are out there.BUT,yours looks like a kit you'd buy.You did good work,and I have to ask (as mentioned above),did you have the pipe bent?
 
thanks a ton for the compliments. Yeah I'll post up demensions and such when I get home, I'm on my iPhone right now. No I didn't bend the pipe myself. I got it on eBay, 2' in length pre-bent to 90*. There is a company on there that sells all pre-bent intercooler piping bent to different angles. I picked up that 90* piece for $42 shipped. It's a nice piece too, about 4mm thick. Anyways, I didn't really have to do any work, just bought all the parts and pieced it together. Only thing I had to do was cut the pipe down on both sides because it was too long.

NikwoaC, that's a good idea about getting it powdercoated. The aluminum should be fine but I might get it powdercoated black just for looks
 
The only reason I say that is because one winter condensation got under the hood while the car was sitting in the garage (I don't drive it in the winter) and the TB, EGR, valve covers, and a few other bare aluminum parts all ended up developing a chalky scale and looked like hell. It was a leaky garage with big windows, so I imagine what happened was some moisture got in there and then baked when the sun came through the windows.

Powder coated parts are trick, anyway. :nice:
 
^ :lol: yeah i know what you mean.

here's a few more pics with the filter on. you can't see in the pics, but i also did a little bit of wire hiding as well. i took the pics before i did this though. there are no more wires in view on the passenger side except behind the strut tower where the big harness is. on the driver's side i hid as much wiring as i could without relocating the coil or solenoid. so there's still some wires right there, but it's a lot better than it was. you can see i wiped up the area where the air box was. :D that's all i've done as far as cleaning up in there and all i did was get a towel wet and wipe it a bit. looks a ton better already!

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