Cold Air Intake w/ Tutorial

Ok, first thing is first, if you try this yourself I warrant nothing and I hope it improves your car, but it won't necessarily. On my car, I gained lots of power from 2500 - 5000 rpm, what a difference.

Preperation Step 1: Tools: You will need various tools, including a hack saw, some screw drivers, a good box cutter (we didn't have a good one), some alligator clamps, some sockets and maybe un-cuttable fingers (those alligators hurt me).

Preperation Step 2: Equipment: You will have to run to your local Lowes (Since Home Depot screwed my family business over), and pick up some various items. I needed 3 of these 12 x 3" bendable ducting tubes ($10 each):

You will also need three, maybe four, of these clamps to lock everything in place:

Then you will need a handy dandy roll of this metal tape:

Also, for looks and also some application, grab one of these rubber elbows:

Lastly, you will need the intake filter, which I happened to already have, however, you could get a bigger one, theoretically.

Step 1: Remove Battery & Intake: First, you have to take out your battery that should look something like this:

And also unscrew and remove the clamp around your intake to make it look like this:

*Note* If you do not already have a custom short ram intake, you will have to remove your breather box. I do not have the exact steps on that, because I did not take pictures at the time. Also, to make room for the intake, you will need to remove the water-logging system (white containers) from the bottom mid-engine of the car. That took only about 20 minutes initally, and I also don't have pictures of that. For clarity purposes, the black tubing that ran to the front and did nothing, was also removed.

Step 2: Shape Ducting: In this step you will have to use trial & error to get the precise shape for the ducting, eventually this is where the hack saw came in because it was impossible to fit the tubing from the air-flow adapter to go around the battery. Eventually, just the fatter end off one of the tubes was cut, and locked into the other piece to form this:

*Note* The third ducting will stay almost straight, so you can leave it for now. Also, make sure that the shape you come up with is the final locked piece, because you have to rotate the pieces about 180 degrees and they lock into place.

Step 3: Attach Filter to last piece of ducting: Unfortunately, I had to cut a piece of that elbow, and then use two clamps to make the ducting fit inside and stay stuck to the filter, here is the final product of that. (I just used the box cutter to cut the rubber, it's very easy.)

Now, at this point you should have two pieces that look something like this:

And combined they look like this:

Step 4: The Underbody: Again, unfortunately, you have to remove the underbody to fit the filter in, and to actually lock the pieces together, you need to screw them in from the bottom and top separately. So now you will need to remove this (There should be about 3 clips and about 3-4 bolts, depending):

entirely, so you will have this much room:

And now you should be able to slide under and theoretically see your friend through the hole:

Step 5: Setting Intake: This part is relatively simple, at least with 2 people. Just push the one piece with the intake and ducting from the bottom up to the top:

And hold it in place while the person up top adjusts things:

Have the person up top fidget the piece onto the intake, and just set it there so you can bend things some more, and start to get it all to come together:

Haha, whoops, we wouldn't want our intake THIS cold!

Step 6: Attaching Intake: Again with the cutting..you will need to cut the other end of that elbow, and attack it on the flow-sensor end of the intake, and put another clamp around it for tightening, like so:

Then add a bracket for support, I just chose this location because it was the only bracket/length I had.

Step 7: Sealing Intake: This part is real simple, just take that handy dandy metal tape and seal up with your best judement any part that needs sealing.

Step 8: Replace Battery: This part is actually much more difficult than it seems. I had to cut the edge of the positive side connecter clip (Only plastic) and i managed to make it work. Reattach everything and make it all pretty:

Now, at this point you would say hey, I'm just about done, close up the bottom and we will be all good to go. Well, I tested and found that it does not get enough air down there without some modification, so if you WANT to, to make the cold air intake actually work, you will need to cut a hole and add a vent. [I just bought an air conditioning vent for like $5 back at Lowes]

Hey, what's hiding in there, oh my, is that your, intake?

So there you have it Cold-Air Intake for your I30 / Maxima. :) (And I only almost chopped off one finger with those stupid clamps.)