11th Gen Civic/5th Gen Integra Snorkel Prototypes, Design Blog, Pt 2.
Welcome back to our intake snorkel design blog series for the 11th gen Civic.
In part one we looked at the OEM intake air ducts across the Civic and Integra lineup and shared a very early design concept. We looked into what exactly this part is and what it does and as promised we are now going to dive deeper into the 27WON air intake snorkel.
The goal for this upgrade is pretty simple. We want to make as large of an opening as we can. The idea is to get as much COOL outside ambient air into our intake system as possible. To understand how much room we have to utilize, we first took the bumpers off all the cars and 3D scanned the area where the OEM ducts live. With this we can upload the data into our CAD software and learn just how big of a snorkel we can fit in the car and get an idea of what our spatial constraints are.
Next, we identify some pick-up points. How will this all mount on the car? Just like with everything we make, we need this to be a straight drop-in piece that does not require any crazy modifications. We wanted to make sure that you could fit this behind your OEM bumper without any modifications or alterations to the grill. You could basically revert fully back to stock at any time like the part was never even there. We found a way to mount the snorkel to the header panel under the bumper bracket and to the crash bar below.
We went through many design iterations to come up with the design you see below.
We wanted the air to have a big capture point and feed into the air intake as smoothly as possible. This means no hard bends or super sharp turns.
We wanted this snorkel to work well with both our upcoming intakes, OEM intake and other aftermarket intakes.
You can see in the image below how large the snorkel inlet is but it’s still able to fit tucked behind the bumper and grille. We did a lot of massaging to make the air transitions as smooth as possible and use up as much space as we could without restricting too much airflow to the radiator behind.
You can see where we are headed with this design. A little more back story. The 10th generation Civic has better access to the fender area for fresh air. The 11th generation Civic and Integra do not. Further, Honda did a nice job with the OE intake for these newer cars. Aftermarket intakes are not going to give much of any power on a stockish car.
So if we can’t get more fresh air (via fender) and plopping an intake in there is not going to give the gainz then why bother with an intake?
Realizing this, the snorkel concept was born. Get more fresh air. This snorkel helps us get more air from outside of the car to mimic that same idea. Hint: This is also why our intake is taking so long. We are innovating like crazy to deliver an intake that’s actually worth buying for this platform.
Let’s wrap up this blog with a picture of a pre-production part (peep that FMIC). In the next blog we’ll share some performance data for this snorkel and show you the finished parts.
Stay tuned as we continue to bring you more news and release details about most complete and comprehensive air intake system for the 11th Gen Civic and 5th Gen Integra.
Till next time
-Vincent
Co-Founder