What's the reason behind 360 using only drivers side intake?

maybe nowhere to place the oil cooler?

 

The engine can only suck in so much air as it is a given volume. If you're doing 50MPH, that one opening is more than suffice IMHO. The only thing that helps performance is to stuff air into the engine. Both opne might raise the pressure of the incoming air a tad at speed, but a turbo is the best way to go at that IIRC..

 

I think that the passenger side is used for radiator (at least it looks like radiator)

 

Engine Oil cooler

 

The GruppeM airbox is open at both ends FWIW. Here you can see the right side opening. It is open to the engine bay. It is smaller diameter than the main intake on the left that feeds from the outside vent. I don't know if it is designed to suck more air, if needed, or to allow air to escape to equalize the pressure if intake doesn't need it all. Anyone know?
If it is to increase the intake volume it would be hot air from near the exhaust which doesn't seem ideal.
Disregard text in pic it was to show heat shield attach points.
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I would have thought that having the RHS side open to the engine bay would cause two problems -- one where the path of least resistance would cause more engine bay air to be sucked in (well at lower road speeds) and two where hot engine bay air would drop the horsepower -- engines like cooler air to develop more horsepower.
Alan

 

ok thanks. learn something new everyday

 

Yeah Alan, I am not sure of the design it was on my car when I got it. I could plumb it to a cooler than engine bay heat source but I haven't found anyone who has done this.

 

The airflow restrictions are @ 8350rpm (ish) where the electronics (AFM's) and airbox shape/design, not to mention the back pressure of the stock exhaust, cats and headers configuration. There was therefore no need to open up further air intakes and conveniently the oil cooler was easier to locate here (due to flat floor aero) than anywhere else, so "job done"....

Some aftermarket airboxes do have provision to open up the other side but you'd need to relocate the oil cooler and possibly fit a lexan rear window with an integrated air scoop (just like 360 Modena Challenge had) if you went down this route, ofcourse there are always gains to be made but this would be in conjunction with many other mods way before this became the bottleneck.

If you start increasing power and producing power higher up the rpm range the air intake could indeed become a problem but not before you see other limitations such as the intake manifold (red crackle finish intake) needing a wider bore (custom job) and bigger throttle bodies and larger afm's. Some 360 racing cars which got modified ran without AFM's and ran 599/430 TB's but they where highly specialist extremely costly conversions.

On the F430 Ferrari engineers did indeed open up both sides and increased the bore of the intake too, so the larger capacity 4.3 engine must consume considerably more air than the 3.6 at full chat and only then was it considered necessary. I.e. when banging on the door of 460hp+ and by this point you need bigger fuel injectors, etc. so it would be done as part of an overall major conversion. In summary much cheaper to buy an F430 or do a rather involved F430 engine transplant!

 

A bit pricey, but I think well worth it - very cool looking to boot.

 

360Trev, Should I plug the other side up on my GruppeM?

 

I was looking at my 458 airbox today it has air intakes on both sides of the airbox going to each air vent.

 

Cooler air is more dense and better for power gains than hot air. The ram air effect only really yields slight gains of a few bhp (but free) at high speeds whereas warm air will degrade performance everywhere in the rev range. Unless the other side is connected to clean cool fresh air there is very little reason to leave it open, it's likely degrading performance more than helping if it's breathing hot air from the exhaust box region!

If you relocated the radiator and had fresh air you may gain a couple more hp above say 90mph.

 

Ram air is a bit of a myth, you need massive amounts of air to increase air pressure at WOT.

 

Thanks Trev, it seems like so precious few people are running this setup that it is hard to get advice of what to do with it. I guess it can't hurt to plug it up and see how it drives! Since it is a smaller diameter than the intake side I always assumed that it wouldn't really suck that much air. I can hear the suction from the vent by my head when I get on it from low revs. I always assumed it was there for "extra" intake at the extreme end of performance and I rarely visit there for more than a few seconds!

 

Kevin, are the filters at the end of the intake tube on this system close to the MAF's?

 

Yes, the design uses a cone shaped K&N custom filter.
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Thanks Kevin,

I wonder if anybody has done back to back dyno runs with OEM and this type of airbox? I would be interested to see the numbers. The idea of the tapered intake tube is to increase air velocity before it hits the MAF; the filter would have an effect this one way or another being so close.
I’m not saying it doesn’t work here I’m just looking for solid test data other than the manufactures claims. The airbox is considerably larger than OEM and any composite be it glass or carbon is better than aluminium for this application.