I see that a lot of ppl have made their own air kits as opposed to paying $200+ for one. This is an area I don't have much experience but want to. Does anyone have a good write up and some pics of building their own air kit? Thanks
I've made and tested maybe 4 of them, then multiple tweaks to each of those 4. I've got another one I'm gonna try to finish up tonight. At least the functionality of it and maybe a little cosmetics.
Something important to know is that the snorkel on the stocker is part of the intake tract overall length. If you don't use it on your DIY intake, or al least maintain the same length, it will change intake tuning some. This can hurt or help performance, depending on lots of things including how you ride, stock vs aftermarket pipes, stock fuel mapping vs aftermarket fuel processor, Euro gears, etc.
The V2K is sort of an anomaly. The low revving nature and long stroke make it a little tougher to tune right, and a little easier to tune wrong. It has taken me a while to figure this out. Everyone pretty much knows how to move a lot of air efficiently at high rpm. But moving a lot of air efficiently at low rpms without creating intake or exhaust reversion is little bit trickier.
That makes really good sense. If you can get pics of your setup and in particular where you've incorporated the snorkel it'd really help. Those are the things I need help with. I can cut some aluminum, drill some holes, and sandwich an air filter onto it. But beyond that I just don't have the knowledge. Thanks man
One thing to note is I am currently running stock pipes and don't have a fuel processor. I'll probably try to add these things over the winter. I've heard people leave the temp sensor out in the open when they've done this. Is that what I should do?
That's what I did. I have the intake I made and 3" hard kromes with no fuel prossesor, and the bike runs fine. I was worried of running lean, and I figured that by leaving the sensor out in the open it would tell you ECU to throw a little more fuel in the mix. I can definitely say that it's not running lean, it's pretty black in the pipes.
Is it running to the optimal performance, probably not, but my seat dyno tells me it's running pretty good, I can't bitch about its performance, and I can get 140 miles out of a tank of fuel before the light comes on. That's running premium or regular, it don't seem to bother the bike.
I also have the Baron's BAK there put in by previous owner, it is a good piece, well made but I do not like the looks of it, for my taste is too big and I do not like the graphics on it. Also the bif metal cover radiates a lot of heat toward my leg.
I will try to do what I did to my 1600, have no idea what it will do to performance but I don't think it will be a big deal anyway, the purpose afterall is to let more air in and improve the ease of airflow.
The only thing the Baron's has going fot it is the depth, it is a very narrow set up so it does not interfere at all with the knee.
As soon as I do the mod I'll post pix and comments.
Here are some pix of the V2K with the BAK and some of the 1600 with the "home made" air kit (about $30 total).
So most all of the homemade air kits I'm seeing don't utilize these 2 hoses at all. I'm not even 100% sure on their function, but what did you end up doing with them if you didn't use them on your intake?
The top hose is for EPA stuff. It feeds fresh air to the exhaust gases when needed. There are detailed posts on the forum here on how to do that. But, yeah, don't need that. The bottom Jose is your crankcase vent. You need the hose just not going into the filter. Most attach a little filter you can get at the auto stores for usually $9 and tuck it wherever.
Relocating the IAT is a good idea since you'll be going to a metal back plate. The metal will hold more heat (heat soak). If the IAT is mounted in the metal back plate it could gives you a higher intake air temp than actual vs the stock config which has it mounted in plastic. Splice in some length of wire and mount the IAT elsewhere that won't be effected by engine/exhaust heat. Mine is mounted under the bottom of my lower fork clamp, protected by a custom housing.
Upper hose goes to air switching valve, lower hose is crankcase vent. Route lower hose to ground or install an aftermarket filter. Air switching valve can be removed by installing 1/2" high temp vacuum plugs on each cylinder head and installing a 22 ohm/5 watt resistor in the connector to the air switching valve. Several threads about the AIS removal mod on this forum.
You can see the little air filter hanging on one of my previous pix, 4 the top hose the easiest thing is to cap it with a marble but my plan is to get rid of the hoses altogether as soon as I get to a weekend with no shores from the wife and an empty tank to put in the plugs on each cylinder head as Izzy mention. The after effect is less backfiring on decel.
schittcan, gutt, toss, nix ever bit of extraneous plumbing not essentialy needed for operation.. klean the beast.
cut you a gasket from flatt stock to fit the throttle body flange face.
cut you a 7" round back plate from 1/8"(?) alum flatt stock. I put ears on my so to drop the bugger away from tank paint.
cut holes to match the throttle body.
drill (5) holes to mount to throttle body.
drill (2-3) holes and thread tap to mount the hardley air filter.
rotate hardley air filter so (2-3) holes miss the throttle body. I use jus bottom two.
mount air filter.
get you a hardley or some otter air filter "dog bowl" cover and screw it the air filter.
Find you a proper fitting graffix to cover up any etched bossed hardley logo, so nobody gets confused and thinks mebbe hardley is starting to make a decent sled these daze.. we don't want that.. confusion.
go ride the beast and show off yor handy work, if they ask, jus tell em "NO its nott a hardley!" ponchout
got the valves vacuum capped and a small filter purchased for the crankcase vent. Also picked up a 22ohm 5watt resistor. That just needs to go here right? just clip the wires off the harness and add the resistor between them?
also how necessary is it to have a filter for the crankcase vent? Can I just aim the hose downward or is it going to suck dirt into the crankcase if I do that?
got the valves vacuum capped and a small filter purchased for the crankcase vent. Also picked up a 22ohm 5watt resistor. That just needs to go here right? just clip the wires off the harness and add the resistor between them?
also how necessary is it to have a filter for the crankcase vent? Can I just aim the hose downward or is it going to suck dirt into the crankcase if I do that?
no filter needed. route point that crank vent hose to the ground and let it blow vapors back to planet earth where they came from. there is nothing new under the sun, as some libturd tree huggin climate changers would have you believe.
you can plug that resistor into the white female connector that fed the old solenoid valve. done. red FI lite is out. poncho
Got it fabbed up. I'll have to spend some more time making it look nice but fired my bike up and boy does that suck in air now. Unfortunately didn't have time to ride tonight. HOWEVER, I've got an FI light. Is that because I unplugged the AIS and haven't yet soldered in the resistor yet?
RePickrel, Ponch nailed it for get more air. After your first one you'll likely make a few more or have different covers for whatever your mood is. That's the beauty of it.
The current one I'm working on is pretty unorthodox. But it's what I've always wanted which is the double barrel look but with one filter, not two separate ones. Never seen it done before. But this is about as challenging as it gets. It has the volume I want, has an inlet adapter so I can swap out inlet design, shape and length for tuning, and has some cosmetic bling to it. It has a clear cover and a false bottom that hides the mounting bolts. It also carries the paint scheme into the filter for an additional custom look. Most won't dig this setup but it's what I've been wanting and you can't buy it anywhere. I'm about 90% done. Here's a few pics.
Making a template for the cover:
My jig for reshaping the filter. It's the VTX1800 filter that comes with the K&N BAK. Found a pair of the filters on Amazon for $6.95 each maybe 2 years ago and shelved them. No joke.
Love your creativity Jim.
Ok I need some help now
Got it fired up. Sounds great at idle. Give it some gas and occasionally it'll sound almost like it's going to die for a brief second before it revvs up. And then after giving it a little more gas there was some sort of backfire from the fuel injectors; somewhere under the intake. It shot out a little smoke. I just shut the bike off then. Any advice??
Too lean of a mixture can do that. But you still have stock pipes, right? Could be an isolated event or possibly some intake reversion. Your intake likely improved air flow at some rpms and likely reduced it at others as air velocity will be a little different at different rpms.
I had never seen anything like this intake done before so I wanted to see how it looked. I'm pretty happy with it. It hasn't totally grown on me yet. I'll give it a week.
Got my cover fabbed up and painted black. I'm not totally in love with it but it'll do. The PK on it is my family brand. We own a ranch. I also have the brand tattooed on my side. I just cut it out with a jigsaw.
Don't know how you've got your inlets radiused, but a cheap, easy way to modify the inlet contour, and seeing how awesome you are with the jigsaw, is to make a contoured adapter to go over your back plate. Big Lots sells two nice white plastic cutting boards for like $5 each. I forget which plastic it's made of but I throw samples of any plastics I use around the intake in the outdoor grill to see where the melting point it. I usually do 350 degrees. Those cutting boards have a much higher softening point than any other plastics I've tested.
Anyhow, here's an example of one I did.
Little things like getting bolt heads even or below the flow surface and a broader radius make a difference on airflow, especially lower rpms and improved throttle response across the board vs say a radiused 1/4" aluminum back plate. Maybe experiment with varying degrees of radii to see how they work with your fuel and exhaust setup. Anyways, just a DIY low budget thought.
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