puntomk2.MyForum.ro

Jokerman170 · Administrator Joined: 12 Feb 2011 Posts: 16

What is an airfilter?

An air filter is just that - a filter which filters the air your car uses. Without one the engine would suffer, engines don't like dirty air. There are 3 main types of filter:

1. Panel filters - This is what the car runs as standard:

Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits

Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits

2. Cone filters - These are common aftermarket filters. They look cone-like in shape:

Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits

3. Closed filters - A filter which is enclosed inside some casing. An example of a closed filter is the BMC CDA which uses a twin cone filter inside a carbon airbox:

Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits

What is an induction kit?

An induction kit comprises of a filter and some sort of tubing. Without going into too much detail, the induction kit should aim to place the filter in the best position (where the most cool air is available), with tubing which produces as little turbulence as possible. The more bends in the induction the more joins there normally are. Air flows more efficiently over a smooth surface than over a rough one, and most aftermarket kits with bends in have 'joiner' sections in which the airflow is disturbed by numeroase sections of tubing joining.

An example of an induction kit is the GSR kit:

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f265/richardguy5/P1010006Medium.jpg

Or the Focus kit:

Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits

What is available?

Panel filters - Other than the standard replacement, as far as i know there's only one aftermarket panel filter available for the 1.2 8v, which is produced by K&N.

Cone filters - - These are probably the most widely available type of filters. Examples include K&N, Green, Pipercross etc.

Closed kits - The BMC is the most commonly used closed kit, although there are several other options out there if you have a look around.

Induction Kits - There are only 2 off the shelf induction kits available, they are the GSR kit and the Focus kit.

What's best?

To decide what's best you need to look at the pro's and con's of each. We'll look at filters first.

Panel Filter

The Advantages - At around £40 they are cheap and an easy replacement. It's just a case of taking out the old filter from the airbox and replacing with the aftermarket. The panel filter is basically as fiat intended, which to me suggests it's the most cost effective way of getting decent air into the car.

An aftermarket panel filter will be more free flowing and have a greater surface area than a standard - meaning if the engine requires more air the filter can deliver it faster than standard, resulting in improved throttle response. Also, if someone looks in the engine bay they can't tell you have one. The filter is also inside the airbox - meaning it's shielded from any heat (hot air is bad).

The Disadvantages - If you look at the standard airbox you'll notice where it takes the air in it's quite far away and not near anywhere which is getting a direct supply of cold air.

Cone filter

The Advantages - Again, they are cheap and easy to replace. Simply remove the standard airbox and pop it onto the throttle body - a 5 minute job.

A cone filter, like the panel filter is also more free flowing when compared with a standard filter in the airbox. The second advntage is noise. Cone filters make the car sound more 'beefy'.

The Disadvantages - the main drawback of a cone filter is it's position, right above the engine. Everyone knows that hot air rises and engines get hot. When you place an airfilter ontop of a hot engine it's going to be sucking in the surround warm air. Warm air is less dense than cold air, meaning the engine will be running with less efficiency (than compared with if it was being provided with cold dense air). The second problem with cone filters is the way they look in the engine bay. To me they look cheap and nasty and leave a large space in an already pretty empty engine bay IMO.

Closed filters

The Advantages - Closed filters aim to stop issues of heatsoak that the cone filter suffers from by enclosing it in heat proof casing. They generally have air feeds to them which is where they get the incoming air from. The heat proof casing means that the hot air surrounding the filter won't be being used - an improvement over the cone filters.

The Disadvantages - The BMC is quite expensive at £150 but what do you expect when it's made out of carbon! Another problem is positioning IMO Although less revelant with these to an extent, they are still normally positioned directly above the engine. Perhaps a bit of silicone tubing could be utilised to move the kit closer to the front of the bay, and closer to the cold air:

Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits Guide : 8v - Airfilters and Induction kits

Induction Kits

Now for a closer look at the two off the shelf induction kits that are available...

The Focus kit

The focus induction kit uses a twin filter meaning the surface area of the filter and flow characteristics are excellent. The focus kit (and all induction kits) aim to resolve the issuse of the standard location of the filter, i.e. they attempt to relocate the filter into the best place possible. With the focus kit the filter is relocated to the front of the engine bay just behind the slits in the bumper - meaning cold dense air is readily available! The kit adds that bit of 'bling' to your bay and it sounds 'beefy' too.

The Disadvantages - To me this seems to be the best solution available for the vast majority of people. Sure, it won't give the power gains that the GSR kit will give but it's a fraction of the cost. It looks nice, sounds nice and is easy to install - that is enough for most people.

The main disadvantage is the tubing used. It's metal and it hasn't been engineered to try and keep turbulences to a minimum nor has it been engineered to increase gas speed.

The GSR kit

In a nut shell the GSR is the most complete solution available at present. Why? First off you start with a large intake diameter of either 100mm or 70mm depending on which kit you have. This then reduces smoothly in size in specific 'step downs' as the kit progresses further towards it's destination; the throttle body. This results in increased gas speed which equates to more torque. There are also no un necessary joins in the kit and the inside is smooth, meaning less turbulence within the induction system.

The Conclusion

This is a hard question to answer and it depends on how serious you are about tuning your car. For most the Focus kit would be the best in terms of cost to performance ratio. The kit retails for £40 all in, the filter looks nice and sounds nice - for £40 you couldn't really ask for much more.

If you're wanting to spend more money then the GSR kit is the way to go IMO, but the amount of people wanting to spend £230 on a proper induction setup is small.

If you're wanting something that looks like standard but has a little more grunt and flows better then an uprated panel filter would be a good option, and at £10-30 they're cheap enough.

I would avoid cone filters alltogether, they're useless on the punto IMO Other than providing noise they do very little. The focus kit is a better option for around the same price.

Please note that the filter will make very little difference to the performance of the car without a remap IMO, so don't go expecting 10bhp gains