Projects Custom made air cleaner?

Hello all,

Long story short my Holley side draft air cleaner is too tall for my 58 Coronet. Now I have a spacer under the carb to reduce heat and prevent vapor lock but even without the spacer, the sides of the air cleaner are rubbing on the hood. I've shaved as much as I can off of the air cleaner and I still have a clearance issue. So my idea is going custom and finding a single carb batwing style air cleaner. Does such an animal exist? If so who makes them? If not, who can?

Thank you,
Sam

 

How much room do you need to clear the hood?

the rectangular bit that attach to the batwing

do they unbolt?

could you fabricate a set that are off center and drop the air filters down closer to the valve covers ?

do you have room for that?

how proud does the air filter sit off the carb?

could you cut it down and have it sit closer down on the carb?

All this I guess depends on how much room you need to get the filter from touching your hood.

 

All great questions.

I need at least 3/8"

Yes the two side draft air cleaners do unbolt but I don't have the tools to fabricate offset backing plates. They are polished machined aluminum. But that would be the idea to fix it, either drop them down or angle them. And I would have plenty of room for that.

The air cleaner is right on top of the carb. I had to grind some of the aluminum away under the air cleaner because the air cleaner was sitting on the choke. And the other side is barely clearing the throttle linkage.

 

A picture would really help.

 

Good point. Unfortunately the car isn't here right now. It's at the transmission shop getting serviced so I don't have a picture of the hood rubbing but if I get the car back early enough tomorrow I'll grab a picture of that and straight on of the air cleaner. in the meantime, here's one I have handy. The main body clears everything fine, it's the outer filter housings that are hitting the hood.

 

Maybe a low profile large chrome one...if they still make them

 

Like a large round drop base? Like this one

 

Yep with a thinner element. They used to sell custom ones I believe, maybe something with a low hood like a Corvette had something that would work

 

Is it rubbing on the skin of the hood, or the under-hood braces?
Maybe if braces, they can be cut away in that area

 

It's rubbing on the skin. And the one problem with the drop base might be the fuel line and filter. That's fairly high because of how it connects with the carb. This is why the side draft works well except for the rubbing issue.

 

Many of the factory '57 (and some '58) Mopar air cleaners are laid over on the side, like this. Might be an option?

 

It is an option. I do have the original but I hate the look of it. Plus it's heavy and needs a bracket which I don't have

 

Hood scoop.

 

Cut the 2 rectangular filter pods off and have a master welder weld 'em back 3/8" lower. .........or at a slight downward angle. ..........or turn the "pods" 180 if they're off-center in the right direction.

A couple of other less attractive cans of worms to consider are lower motor mounts or a power bulge in the hood.

 

So I was actually thinking about this last night. The filters and pods are removable as they bolt on. It's a little hard to see in the picture below but right before the Holley logo there's an Allen screw. I was thinking if I remove the pods and cut the flat part back to where it angles down, make a new bolting bracket inside the ***embly for the pods to screw to, that might just work. But I need to make sure I have enough meat on the angled areas of the air cleaner ***embly.

 

What about the corvette and GTO super flat one. Use a very thin filter. I didn't see if you had a two are four bbl card. If a two you would have to shrink the bottom piece to fit.

 

It's the stock 4 barrel Carter WCFB which has the funky smaller neck so I need to use an adapter for most air cleaners. I've basically recessed the adapter into the Holley so that's ok. It might be a problem though for another air cleaner style. Since the picture below I have shaved the bottom of the adapter off

 

Is your hood higher in the center than on the sides? Would rotating the hammerhead air cleaner work? I have a similar problem with my '55 Chevy truck and rotating the air cleaner to a 45 degree angle got me the extra clearance necessary.

 

It's high on the sides, or better yet, my hood slopes down on the sides

 

Now this may work too, remove my pods and put two of these on the ***embly if they are small enough. The angled shape might just give me the clearance I need.

 

I think the easiest solution would be to cut the filter pods off and lower them a bit. You might even have to fabricate new pod bases instead of trying to reuse the old ones, or use the ones like you posted above.
Shouldn't be too bad.

We had to fabricate some air cleaners to fit 58 Packard. We chose to run on old Weiand two 2brl intake with some Rochester WW's with the sidedraft neck. There wasn't much clearance between the 2 carbs and nothing on the market that would come close to working. We ordered a pair of the small round aluminum air cleaner bases and tops and then fabbed up some decks to meet the carbs. We then used some screening from a rock crusher to make the outer screen to cover the filter.

Anything is possible

 

Awesome work!

My filter pods screw on, no cutting required. What I would need to do is fabricate new pod backing plates, or find a replacement that drops them down

 

Those little pods won't flow enough air for the hemi anyway. There is a formula for surface area requirements. A round drop base or a thin dual snorkel is probably the best bet

 

I was thinking something like this may work, but those ports seem small too.

 

Ah ha! The plot thickens.
The fact that it's all modular opens up more possibilities. That adapter must be the culprit, raising the filter too high. A carb change to one without an adapter (shorter) is moving up to the top of the list of options. I'm guessing you are wanting to keep the original carb but it's gone over to the darkside in this case.
The angled, K&N filters might work if they're not bigger at the base than what you have now. But the *****y K&N logos are not a good look. Definitely shave those off if you go that route.
Something occurred to me over my morning coffee; the top sides of your filter elements are shrouded by the close proximity of the hood, blocking some air there. You may actually need more than 3/8".

 

The adapter and spacer are part of the problem. The real issue is the stock air cleaner is very low profile and hangs over the p***enger side valve cover. it's also hideous and unruly. Plus I'm missing the bracket so it's putting too much pressure on the hold down screw.

Now the carb, well I just rebuilt it about a year ago and it works perfectly so I'd rather not replace it.

And yes, those filters are getting cut off from the hood, which is a problem. So maybe a simple triangle style or round unit would work best. Boring but functional

 

These guys may be worth a look.......... or worth bookmarking 'em in any case.
http://www.ramairbox.com/models.html
Start by looking at the bases, then the boxes.

I agree about the stock air cleaner. It looks like a clunky, stock, afterthought. It's not Hot Roddy.

 

http://www.ramairbox.com/bases.html
Scroll to the bottom to click the tab(s) for all the info.

 

Now if I had two of them d****d over each side, that looks cool, but the single unit looks like a left over muffler

 

You may be able to rework the original a little bit.
On my Straight 8 Packard project the original oil bath air cleaner was a huge monstrosity that covered up a big part of the engine.
I cut it apart, got rid of the silencing chamber, used the bottom of the oil bath part for an end and found a paper element that would work with it. I used the same crusher screen as I did for the 58 Packard air filters posted earlier. I'll turn the hole mess 90 degrees. I think It'll have a distinctive look on my little roadster