My airbox lid mod: Protection and performance (Hopefully)
Posted: 08:23 pm May 12 2015
This subject was once again beaten nearly to death recently so I don't want to get back into that. That thread did get me thinking, though. I know that lots of people run without the air box lid and have no troubles but I'd personally feel a lot better if I had something there to keep muddy water out. It's the gritty particles of dirt suspended in muddy water that could potentially get through the air filter that worry me. I'd like to make my top end last as long as possible and I'd just feel a lot better about attacking a large mud hole if I knew that my filter wasn't going to get splashed. Last time I went out riding I got into some moderately muddy conditions and my filter looked like this afterwards;
Not too bad but there's enough mud splashed around that I feel like something should be done. Also, the mud could have been a lot worse that day.
I went into this a bit in the last thread where this was being debated but I'll lay it out here, too. The original inlet hole in the lid is pretty small so I figured that I'd enlarge it and build a baffle to direct any mud or water away from the filter. Here's the hole before and after; The new hole is about 4 times as large as the original.
I used some aluminum roof flashing and a rivet gun to fabricate the baffle. I made it with a raised lip that sticks up about 12mm from the top surface of the lid so that any liquid that gets onto the lid can't run down the hole. Then I riveted a chute onto it and bent the sides up. This should direct any liquid that gets into the hole away from the filter and into the bottom of the air box to drain out. I used some epoxy to position the aluminum piece into the lid then sealed around the perimeter with RTV. I would have rather used black but that tube turned out to be all dried up so blue it was.
And here it is installed onto the bike. Hopefully this will keep the majority of the mud off the filter without having a real impact on performance. I know that it will make me feel better about the universe. The picture makes it look like the aluminum flap nearly closes off the airbox but there's really a lot more open space than can be seen in the picture.
Not too bad but there's enough mud splashed around that I feel like something should be done. Also, the mud could have been a lot worse that day.
I went into this a bit in the last thread where this was being debated but I'll lay it out here, too. The original inlet hole in the lid is pretty small so I figured that I'd enlarge it and build a baffle to direct any mud or water away from the filter. Here's the hole before and after; The new hole is about 4 times as large as the original.
I used some aluminum roof flashing and a rivet gun to fabricate the baffle. I made it with a raised lip that sticks up about 12mm from the top surface of the lid so that any liquid that gets onto the lid can't run down the hole. Then I riveted a chute onto it and bent the sides up. This should direct any liquid that gets into the hole away from the filter and into the bottom of the air box to drain out. I used some epoxy to position the aluminum piece into the lid then sealed around the perimeter with RTV. I would have rather used black but that tube turned out to be all dried up so blue it was.
And here it is installed onto the bike. Hopefully this will keep the majority of the mud off the filter without having a real impact on performance. I know that it will make me feel better about the universe. The picture makes it look like the aluminum flap nearly closes off the airbox but there's really a lot more open space than can be seen in the picture.
