HI ALL, Thanks for your help and support so far. As a new F owner its good to know there's a 24hr support group out there. Now I know the purists out there will want to hunt me down like the dog that I am BUT... I was thinking of just removing the air-boxes and letting those beautiful trumpets breathe (and shine). Apart from filtering issues what else can I expect? Heat shouldn't really be a problem in Ireland our hot days are around 24C/75F never goes above 30C/80F Thanks Niall
Just remember, that a random stone could get sucked in and require a complete rebuild before you do it...
How about making some covers out of lexan? That way you maintain the air filters but could still see the velowity stacks.
You'll probably need to re-jet the carbs as well as it will breathe more easily. One drawback would be that the air would be hotter going into them, which would reduce the power. They would sounds fantastic though.
I wouldn't recommend running without some decent air filters on the intakes. Sure it looks and sounds great, but the amount of particulate matter getting inside the engine will be a lot more than with a filter and that means lots of premature engine wear. Everyone gets enthralled by the sight of 6 or 12 trumpets with screens on them in competition cars but remember that competition car engines get torn down and rebuilt every 10 or 20 or 50 hours. They're going to get worn for a whole bunch of reasons with lack of air filtering being only one and not on the critical path. On a road car, the wear would be extreme in MHO.
I have run my 365 without the air boxes and here is an attached pix. problem with the design, which I have gone away from, is a lack of cold air intake. Without the air plenum there is no way to balance the air intake due to uneven incoming air temps. Cylinders 5&6 and 7&8 get a whole lot of really warm air from the exhaust manifolds. The engine actualy runs way under powered using the individual-exposed intakes. This looks great but, at what cost. Possible burned valves? What I have done is to install the air boxes, replace the $299 air filters with a K&N for a Yamaha motorcycle stuffed in the inside air inlet. Works great. Image Unavailable, Please Login
One thing that you can say about Ferrari is that they didn't really leave out any easy "tuning" ideas to increase performance. The engine configurations are pretty much optimized at the factory unless you want to dig into the engine and install hotter cams or turbochargers. They've already taken care of the easy stuff to improve performance.
