OK guys, I have to say we are not a BMC clone!! WE were the first people to start marketing closed airboxes - all the others have stemmed from us. The box we have designed for the CTR is a revision of the original AB80 design which we developed for the 1998 Honda National Saloon Car's (class B touring cars) and which was later used on many other cars on the grid.
We later developed the smaller AB65 which was first used on the Series 1 lotus elises and ended up on the Civic Vti and DC2 Integra. The design of these airboxes is different to most on the market, most notably the trumpet shape on the inlet. This helps remove turbulence within the airbox and also helps wrap the air around the filter - air pressure is also recovered from air velocity meaning there is always a full volume of air availabe for the engine to draw from. This leads to a much crisper throttle response, especially when feathering the throttle.
The comments about the cold air duct looking tatty is well deserved, the one fitted on Pauls car was the original that I formed using my hands, a big hammer and a steel bar, we are having tooling made to make this tidier - someone mentioned about making this rigid, the airbox is mounted directly onto the engine and gearbox (with a 3mm thick ally plate) so we have to have a flexible pipe here. The comments about the convaluted hose not flowing well wont really apply in this application, the ducting used is 102mm bore which will flow more air than you are ever likely to need from these engines and any turbulence generated here will be sorted out by the airbox anyway.
We are collecting air from the hole in the inner wing by the battery, during the initial developement of the kit we fitted a pyrometer into the inlet hose by the throttle body so we could check inlet teperatures whilst out on the road. With the standard airbox (collecting air from behind the grille) we found that the intake temperature was 10 degrees over ambient, with an AB65 lashed on with the nose pointing at this hole (not even sealed over the hole) we measured 1 degree above ambient. An easy gain in power straight away, why Honda don't collect air from there is a mystery to me!!
The tests we carried out on Saturday were as fair as we could achieve using Pauls car, it wasn't until two days before the test that I realised Paul had modified his standard box - if we could have tested the car with a bog standard box we would. The graphs we are going to post on the website will be with the 95 RON fuel, the Optimax test was more Hamish trying to prove a point as opposed to jacking up our figures, we always try to be as fair as possible and only show results we know will be repeatable. As Paul has made you aware, we will be happy to go head to head with any other kit on the market, and to satisfy you people with the Gruppe M kits we can run ALL the tests with the bonnet closed.
If anyone has anything else to ask, feel free, thats why I'm here.
lol) but as the price is at the higher end of the scale I'm sure all prospective buyers will be scrutinising/investigating (spelling?) as much as possible.
