Velossa Tech Designs Big Mouth Intake Snorkel: Initial Review

[Tonkabob]

Thank you for the kind words! And yes I am an enthusiast first before anything!

To answer your question about the stock snorkels, they are pulling air from a dead cavity. The definition of a dead cavity is a place where air stagnated and dynamic pressure was lost to turbulence energy or momentum loss etc... when instead the momentum of the air could have been used to transport more air mass, which is what the ram ducts do.

The engine is always always always sucking. It pulls in air faster than can be rammed in from the big mouths, what the big mouths do is allow the ECU to suck air from a place of higher pressure, this pressure increases with the square of velocity of the car. Instead of pulling air from a dead cavity (stock inlets) that is essentially always at ambient pressure due to the loss of dynamic pressure because of the shroud in the way and how the stock snorkels are tucked up and away (picture coming), the air through the big mouths is moving at a high enough velocity such that it will stagnate at or near your air filter, and thats what the engine 'sees' as an increase in inlet absolute pressure. Note i said inlet absolute pressure because the engine will still be under vacuum with the ram ducting, just 'less vacuum' because the ducts are putting more of a positive value to the 'sucking' effect, this is a reduction in engine vacuum work and where power comes from and massflow comes from. Hope this makes sense!

How do you see the big mouth snorkles working on after market intakes where the airbox is gone so no closed space to build pressure? Just more cool air flow?

 

[VelossaTech]

How do you see the big mouth snorkles working on after market intakes where the airbox is gone so no closed space to build pressure? Just more cool air flow?

The airbox doesnt need to be fully closed air tight, remember the engine is still pulling vacuum. As long as the filters have some shrouding around them, itll work just fine.

 

[DaJackson]

Updated my post above with more info and pics.

Velossa Tech Designs Big Mouth Intake Snorkel: Initial Review

 

[Tonkabob]

Updated my post above with more info and pics.

Velossa Tech Designs Big Mouth Intake Snorkel: Initial Review

Great write up. Is much left of the shroud? Worth cutting or just remove it?

 

[DaJackson]

Great write up. Is much left of the shroud? Worth cutting or just remove it?

So the shroud is the entire height of the radiator, the upper half has the two scoops and the lower half is two planes the are perpendicular to the bumper on the outside of the radiator. These basically help direct air to the radiator and keep it from bouncing off the radiator rot and going to the outside.

Is it worth it? For me it took about 20 min to figure out where to cut, cut, reinstall and be done. That was worth it to me to keep some of the air directed at the bottom half. But I don’t see any strong negative to just removing it all together.

 

[Audible Silence]

Sorry for the delay in getting this written up.

This weekend I installed the snorkels which was fairly easy even with trying to save as much of the shroud as possible. The hardest part was removing the clips for the wireing harness as there isn’t much room to get a tool in there to pry them out but that took no more than 5 min.

I taped everything up when removing the bumper to try and keep from having any paint issues.
View attachment 13855

After getting the bumper off I found some interesting things stuck to my intercooler including this butt and a dragonfly.

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Here you can see the stock snorkle and how it comes up from behind the radiator shroud. This is when I realized that saving and of the upper scoops wasn’t going to happen. However there are still guides for the lower half of the radiator that I wanted to save.

View attachment 13856

With the shroud out this is where I cut it to retain the lower parts. This keeps two of the bolts per side so it’s still firmly attached. It also keeps all the mounting holes for the wireing harness that runs across the front.

To cut the shroud I used a combo of snips and a Dremel. The plastic is fairly brittle so the snips would cause the plastic to crack a bit further than where it was cut. This can’t be seen when the bumper is on so no need to make it look pretty.

View attachment 13858

Here you can see the snorkels installed with the lower shroud

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Close up of the shroud and the snorkels.

View attachment 13860

Bumper reattached

View attachment 13861

I wanted to do some testing of air temps before and after install. Unfortunately I started baseline testing on Saturday where it was about 85 degrees and by the time I got the readings it had dropped to 78. And Sunday after the snorkels were installed it was in the lower 90s.

To do the testing I hooked up my FireBoard that I use for smoking with 3 ambient temperature probes. One in the duct, one in the K&N air box behind the filter and one on the other side of the air box in the engine bay.

View attachment 13854

Here is a view of the probe in the duct from the front of the car with the snorkel off.

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Here is a read out of the temperatures over a 20 min drive. As you can see the car started out at about 125-130 degrees. As soon as the car started moving at about 45mph the duct and filter temps drop below 100 degrees.

Each of the spikes is where I stopped for a light or traffic. All three temps would increase but as soon as the car started moving the duct and filter temps would immediately drop while the engine bay would slowly drop. Cruising at about 55mph the duct and filter temps got very close to ambient temp.

Also for those that thought the K&N mistakes didn’t do enough to block engine heat, you can see the filter is seeing ~30 degree cooler temps than the engine bay. The two probes were about 2” apart with just the K&N heat shield between them.

View attachment 13754

In addition to seeing he temperature changes just looking at the design installed you can see how there will be much more air traveling through the snorkel and over the filter which will help overcome heat soak.

Also I drove though a bit of a rain shower on the way home yesterday and the air box was dry. There was still water on the hood and grill as well as a few drops on the mouth of the snorkel but none in the air box.

Great write up. I love the data pulled with the probes.

 

[Adamdan]

So do these fix the biggest restriction in the stingers intake? I wonder how these combined with oem intake and k&n panel filters would do vs full intake.

 

[SKStinger]

So do these fix the biggest restriction in the stingers intake? I wonder how these combined with oem intake and k&n panel filters would do vs full intake.

Based on my dissection of the intake and snorkels, I would say the biggest restrictions are the snorkels and then the smallish filter area of the stock flat filter. Improving one or both can't hurt.

 

[Keith Ruff]

I have always been concerned with water and snow ingestion with intakes like this. They are sticking straight out to the font sucking in anything in their path. Is this not a correct thought? My son's friend has an intake on his 370Z down on the front bumper, he removed the grille and has this giant K&N filter on an intake tube feeding his engine. All I see is water, sand, dust, snow, etc, getting sucked into that filter which can't be good?

 

[DaJackson]

I have always been concerned with water and snow ingestion with intakes like this. They are sticking straight out to the font sucking in anything in their path. Is this not a correct thought? My son's friend has an intake on his 370Z down on the front bumper, he removed the grille and has this giant K&N filter on an intake tube feeding his engine. All I see is water, sand, dust, snow, etc, getting sucked into that filter which can't be good?

Nope, driven through a few strong storms and got home and checked the heat shields and there have only been a few drops of water at the bottom.

Water isn’t very light so to be able to enter the mouth of the intake and reach the filter over a foot away without dropping 1-2” it has to be moving very fast.

 

[SKStinger]

I have always been concerned with water and snow ingestion with intakes like this. They are sticking straight out to the font sucking in anything in their path. Is this not a correct thought? My son's friend has an intake on his 370Z down on the front bumper, he removed the grille and has this giant K&N filter on an intake tube feeding his engine. All I see is water, sand, dust, snow, etc, getting sucked into that filter which can't be good?

Sounds similar to the SSR intake where the actual filter is outside the engine bay behind the grille. That would concern me too.

With just the snorkels though and the filters safely inside the engine bay, I agree with @DaJackson. Should be completely safe. I’m more concerned with insects polluting my filters than anything else but nothing a cleaning can’t remedy.

 

[Socalstinga]

I just drove thru pouring rain today for An hour and intake and shields were dry in the engine bay.

 

[Never thought]

Anyone have any numbers to show a more than theoretical performance improvement?

 

[DaJackson]

Anyone have any numbers to show a more than theoretical performance improvement?

You can’t test these on a dyno. Unless you have one in a wind tunnel.

I posted the temp testing I did and saw improvement in temps at the filter.

 

[Never thought]

You can’t test these on a dyno. Unless you have one in a wind tunnel.

I posted the temp testing I did and saw improvement in temps at the filter.

It can be tested with pre and post 1/4 mile runs. I am not sure if anyone has done that yet. i saw that you did those tests, just not sure what that equates to in power. Did you feel any improvement on the butt dyno?

 

[Doel]

You can’t test these on a dyno. Unless you have one in a wind tunnel.

I posted the temp testing I did and saw improvement in temps at the filter.

how do you know you had temp improvements at the filter? You only tested with the VT on, you never tested with the stock duct, unless you did and didn't post that data?

 

[DaJackson]

how do you know you had temp improvements at the filter? You only tested with the VT on, you never tested with the stock duct, unless you did and didn't post that data?

I did test, but the chart doesn’t match the after chart and the ambient temp changed significantly. However I was able to see the filter temps drop quicker after installing the intakes.

 

[DaJackson]

It can be tested with pre and post 1/4 mile runs. I am not sure if anyone has done that yet. i saw that you did those tests, just not sure what that equates to in power. Did you feel any improvement on the butt dyno?

1/4 times would only show a small part of the story. Like an IC you may see some improvement in 1/4 times but the real improvement is on back to back runs or longer hard drives.

 

[ryan1stinger]

I thought someone posted a pic of a hole in the shroud with the Big Mouth intakes installed?