I went to Lowes last night and got all the stuff I needed to do my "poormans cai" and got 'r done. Had $16.00 in the couplings and elbow and made the stainless steel diamond plate pipe myself. Took about an hour with having to cut the pipe and all. Let me know how you guys think it turned out.

 

That looks allright. Did you roll that diamond plate & weld the seam?
Only downside may be the metal getting heat saturation.

 

yea, rolled it and welded it at work. Never thought about heat saturation, hopefully not a problem, if it is probably just pull it out and run pvc or rubber.

 

Anytime someone can make there own without having to pay the high cost of a K and N, more power to em. I made my own as well for around 80.00 was worth it definitely.

 

Certainly wanna go with some sort of plastic over metal but live and learn. You did nothing wrong and I think it looks good

 

so i see that you went straight to the throttle body and im wondering what do you do with the connection to the side of the airbox that you eliminated? its the connection for the mass airflow sensor right?
im going to do mine very soon and ill need to have that figured out!
also i see you left the stock airbox in place and i thought that was something to eliminate?

 

I only had the one sensor on my set-up that was the air temp. sensor i reinstalled. The only other sensor was the one that is still in the airbox( you can see it in the pics) I left it so I wouldn't have to put a filter on it also. I have heard that if you remove the airbox you just have to put a filter on the mass air sensor when you unhook it, but I wasn't sure so I just left the airbox intact for the time being. May change it out if I have any problems with heat saturation with the stainless pipe.

 

As far as heat saturation with the stainless steel pipe goes how will I know if that is a problem?

 

yea looks great but heat saturation will be your enemy with the metal intake. I know the plastic vs metal K&N I have there is a reported HP difference.

You could make a heat shield under the thing or wrap it in exhaust wrap BUT it kinda would ruin the look.

On another note, if you can bend and weld diamond plate, you could make some killer accessories for us. I would like to have a diamond plate and then powdercoated filler for the gap in between my hitch and bumper and maybe even a PC gap guard. It would look killer

 

I'm still not sure how I will know if I need a heat shield for the heat sat. problem. Or have to wrap it. Maybe I should just throw a piece of 3" abs in there and forget about it, just really liked the diamond plate look. Matt as far as the piece of diamond plate you are talking about for your hitch, pm me and show me a picture or some measurements of exactly what you are talking about.