Hi guys,
I did this mod on my EG race car because I didn't want to spend some ridiculous amount of money to buy some little funnel to replace my headlight. So instead I transformed my own for very cheap!
This was done to an EG but the concept should be easily applicable to other cars.
Final result:
Disclaimer: The following is provided as a GUIDE ONLY, and neither myself nor Ozhonda take any responsibility for the outcomes of someone else doing the following. You follow these steps at your own risk!
Aim: to turn the headlight in front of the air filter into a wind funnel so that air passes through it, directly into the air filter/intake.
Required: What you need to do this mod:
- heat gun
- preferably a metal spatula/scraper, if not a flat head screwdriver or something similar
- angle grinder
- a texta/marker if you like being extra accurate
- a bastard cut file (not necessary)
Steps:
Step 1:
remove the headlight which you want to modify by unscrewing the 10mm bolts securing it to the car (this will likely involve removing the front bumper). For the EG there were about 5 in total (just look for them). The headlight and blinker should come off as one piece.
Store the nuts and bolts in a safe place, and label them if necessary. It pays to be organised!
After this, separate the blinker and the head light (they should slide off each other, if that makes sense).
Step 2:
grind out all the inside of the headlight. Make sure you leave all the brackets intact as shown in the picture. You might want to mark the area you want to cut before you cut it. The idea is to cut out as much crap as you can while leaving all the brackets.
Also, looking at the next picture, I've left some plastic on the right to create a nice funnel effect, since when the headlight is reinstalled there is just some metal in the car's frame behind that bit of plastic, which will create more unwanted turbulence. This bit of plastic I am referring to is also necessary to keep there (in the case of the EG's headlight) in order to keep all the brackets intact.
Step 3:
use the heat gun to separate the glass and the plastic (sorry, no pics on this step). What you have to do is set the heat gun to a relatively low heat/fan setting, direct heat along the seam where the glass and plastic are joined and use the spatula to get in there and separate the two. You don't want so much heat as to fully melt the plastic, but rather just to soften it to the point where it can be dislodged. The lower temperature you can achieve this at, the better the final result will look. Another tip to achieve this is to not focus the heat gun at any single point for too long - try and move it left and right over an area and do that area bit by bit. Do this until you have completely dislodged the two pieces.
Step 4:
file off any excess little bits of melted plastic or whatever for a nicer finish.
Step 5:
rejoin the blinker to the remaining mutilated piece of the headlight and reinstall that to the car just as it was fitted originally. It should look something like this:
In these photos you can see the melted part from the heat gun (where the glass and plastic was joined) and the bit which has been ground off. Have a peak through and you can see the air filter so the air goes directly into it.
Other comments:
A good follow up mod to this might be to create some sort of air box (very thin sheet metal?) surrounding the air filter and the exit of this wind funnel, though I doubt that would make much difference to performance.
Note that I have included photos for the right head light but done the mod the left head light. This is because I applied steps 1 and 2 to the right head light. Why? Because race car. Every gram counts.
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