What I found impressive was that stabilisation brackets were included (specific
to the car) and that there was also a gasket to fit between the filter unit and
the cast alloy adaptor along with all the nuts, bolts and washers required.I wanted to fit a better air filter to replace the Ramair. From a lot of reading on the web (I seem to do a lot of that) I made up my mind that I wanted an Apexi Power Intake. They appear to have very good filtration and give good power gains (at least when tested on a Supra). There is a newish place opened in Cardiff specialising in Japanese cars so I went along and found that the guys at Hyeline were very helpful. They have the advantage of having a someone from Japan working there so reading catalogues printed in Japanese is no problem. They ordered it for me and it arrived a couple of weeks later.
This is what it looked like straight out of the box
What I found impressive was that stabilisation brackets were included (specific
to the car) and that there was also a gasket to fit between the filter unit and
the cast alloy adaptor along with all the nuts, bolts and washers required.
Unfortunately all the instructions were in Japanese. Thankfully from the diagrams it was easy to figure out what went where.
I didn't want to fit it inside the (now shabby looking air box) so I removed the box and fitted the filter directly to the air intake plenum hose and that's where it stayed until I had moved the battery to the boot.
Oh the fun I had with this.
Took the car to Kevin for him to do it as I didn't have a clue where to start
except that I knew what parts I needed.
I got myself a carbon fibre finished GRP battery box; 6 metres of red 135 amp battery cable; some 10mm cable terminals and a cutout switch.
Kevin fed the cable from the engine bay into the passenger compartment via the main electrical cable grommet just about in the middle of the firewall, passed it down the middle of the car alongside the transmission tunnel (on a front wheel drive car?) under the rear seat squab and into the boot. He passed it under the drivers side plastic trim panel in the boot and then out from under the panel so it would go into the box. The box was fixed to the floor of the boot on the drivers side towards the back using two very hefty screws. Holes were drilled in the box to allow the live and earth cables to be passed through. The earth cable was taken to a suitable panel fixing bolt under the trim panel and tightly fixed down.
Under the bonnet the original earth cable from the block to the battery was fixed to a convenient threaded hole in the inner wing and the original live cables were bolted to the new live going to the battery. This connection was well insulated with plastic tube and heat shrink to prevent it shorting against any metal bits and also cable tied in position to stop it moving around. I hadn't fitted the cutout switch at this time as I wanted to make sure that everything worked OK.
It fired up with the first turn of the ignition and had no problems at all
......until a few days later.
There were problems with the alarm - it kept going off at intervals during the day and night (my colleagues in work and my neighbours were not amused one little bit) so I was having to leave the car unalarmed for days at a time as I tried and failed to fix the problem. First thing was to make sure all the connections were sound. Every one of them was taken apart, cleaned back to bright shiny metal, coated with electrically conduction grease (also known as Vaseline) and tightened back up firmly. I made a new earth connection in the boot - taking the paint off the inside of the panel to ensure a good electrical connection. Nothing made the slightest difference. I adjusted the sensitivity of the alarm's internal sensor - no difference. Eventually I put the battery back in the engine bay and remade the original connections - but I still had a problem. Maybe, I thought to myself, the cable is too close to the alarm sensor and is acting like an aerial (clutching at straws now) perhaps inducting the alarm to go off. So I took the cable out of the car completely - but the alarm was still going off for no apparent reason.
I didn't think it was a problem with a voltage drop caused by a failing battery because I had bought a new battery only a few months before. The only thing it could be was that it had nothing to do with moving the battery and it was a bad switch on one of the doors, the bonnet or the boot. I eventually traced it to the boot switch - all I did was clean up the contacts with a few rubs of wet and dry and the problem was solved.
Just a coincidence that it happened when the battery was moved. AARRGGHH
At the same time I had problems starting the car (it never rains but it pours). Sometimes it would fire and sometimes it would not even turn over. I was having to park on any slope I could find so that I could bump start it in case it wouldn't start on the key. I changed the solenoid contacts, the starter motor innards ( the replacement from Fensport disappeared of the face of the earth while it was on it's way to me) and at last the wire from the ignition switch to the starter motor. That was the one that fixed it. I think that routing the live cable for the relocated battery had caused a problem with the ignition wire. But that wasn't the end, oh no it couldn't be that simple could it, By replacing the cable from the ignition to the starter had bypassed some other important bits of the electrics - the cold start injector so that had to be wired back into the circuit.
All that fussing around and the battery was still in the engine bay.
I didn't want to go disturbing any more wiring so I decided to route the live battery cable somewhere else. After a lot of prodding and probing I found another grommet that went from under the nearside plastic inner wing into the passenger compartment under to passenger side kick panel. I had hours of fun threading first, part of a stiff metal wire coat hanger through with thin cord attached to it, then pulling thicker cord though and eventually pulling the live cable through. The cable is fairly thick so it was a case of feeding a bit from the engine bay then getting into the car and pulling it through, then feeding some more and pulling that through, and on, and on, and on. When I had what I thought was enough in the car I fed the cable under the carpet against the passenger side inner sill, under the cross member that the seat is fixed to, through the rear portion of the sill and up under the rear seat squab. Then across the front of the boot and back to where it had originally been under the boot trim panel. This time I fitted an in-line fuse holder ( the type used for in car hi-fi systems) in the cable run for protection against shorting out to the body between the battery and the original fusible link in battery cable. In the engine bay I fitted the cutout switch to a steel panel and connected up the original cables to one side and the new cable to the other. With the switch armed I turned the key and fired it up.
Since then I have blown a few of the 80 amp fuses so it was time to increase the fuse value. I couldn't get hold of any larger fuses to fit the holder so I bought a very neat little fuse unit that fits onto a standard post type battery. The fuse rating can be almost anything you want from 50 to 300 amps just by swapping the fuse - it's exactly right for the job. Bought mine from RS Components together with a few 100 amp fuses. I blew one of these the other day too - trying to start the car with the lights and wipers on after I had stalled it on my driveway. I have some 125 amp fuses now - don't think I blow those too quickly.
In the engine bay I've replaced the steel mounting plate for the cutout
switch with a piece of aluminium alloy.
The Apexi is now mounted directly behind the headlight on the end of a straight length of 2.5" alloy tube - I still need to fabricate a new air box. You can't see the live red cable in the photograph because I've covered it with cable spiral wrap.