Final Observations on a Nude K&N -------------------------------- Now that the weather is getting much warmer and the temp gauge and I have become more familiar I thought you all might find this information useful.

On Sunday I had the chance to see how hot underhood temps really get. It was about 90 degrees F and I was stuck in a traffic jam for around twenty minutes in my BLACK car. Twenty minutes to travel about 800 metres or 1/2 a mile.

Well, the temp transiently went off the scale. That means it went just over 70 degrees C (that's over 158 degrees F)!! It did this for a short while and then came down to 66 degrees C as a result of the fan coming on under the bonnet. This high temperature didn't cause any idle problems at all aside from some slight hunting as the temperature rose initially.

Performance was down when I managed to get out of the jam but the temperature soon dropped to the same as outside after five or so minutes of driving at 70km/h and the car felt quicker again.

So, final lessons from the Underhood Intake Air Temperature experiment.

- It gets damn hot under there but will level out at around 66 degrees C (151F). - This DOES have an impact on performance until things cool down again. - The standard cool air intake vent located behind the left kidney works very very well.

And all of this tells me that I need an efficient heat shield for city driving and short track events such as hill climbs and autocross. Longer track events and country driving probably don't require a heat shield (excluding the different issue of fan wash for a non RamAir setup).

So endeth the project.

Carbon fiber man, here I come....

David Walsh