[jfarcas]

Ok, Noall said he wanted to see a pic of the open air cleaner mod I did to my '90 CFI. I've done this to two of my 1st gens, and it seems to work well, as long as your engine compartment isn't real dirty, 'cause it will soil the filter real quick. I basically did it for cosmetic reasons. I always hated the look of the intake plumbing and I think the open air cleaner housing cleans up the engine room a bit. No real performance benefit, although you can hear the intake a little more under WOT. You can barely see the weird crankcase breather setup I've got hooked up to the left of the filter. Basically had to wire tie the filter together to keep the system functional (main reason I'm looking to do away with the baffle-style PCV system and go with the conventional PCV valve setup).

And a few other pics, just 'cause:

Can't really see the rally-style fog lights I rigged behind the mesh grille! Should've turned them on when the pic was taken.

Getting my daughter into Fords early! She loves Daddy's "old car."

Getting rid of the red. One of the major tasks of this project. Not sure I'll ever get rid of the red in the engine compartment, or behind panels and such. Maybe if it gets a full resto someday, who knows....

 

[WJC]

My 5 and 7 year old niece and nephew love playing in my 86 Escort. They run right to it instead of the Taurus. Maybe because Escorts look like toy cars? :lol:

I don't know about the air cleaner mod. It's actually worse in the sense that you're pulling hot underhood engine air, but you're not getting and more volume because it's the stock A/C. So you're going to be running pretty lean when that engine compartment heats up. I guess if you don't go drag racing, it's OK though.

 

[UnexplodedCow]

Having the exhaust heat shield in place will help keep the heat away from the air filter area. If the header pipe is heat wrapped that should take care of the issue. Of course the underhood heat might be an issue in traffic, but actually moving should help cool that area off a little better. Of course we won't know without thermal probes in various places. In all honesty it's not going to be any worse than what people used to do when inverting a stock air bonnet lid on some carb'd cars in years past. And it might flow a little more air. I know that removing the heat exchanger butterfly seemed to help a bit, so I'd imagine removing the entire bonnet would help airflow, too.

The PCV system is the only real hangup. Maybe the Chinese CVH valve cover would work in this case since it has 2 pcv/breather tubes on it. I wonder what they cost. The only other option is to find an early 1.6 cover and use a vented filler cap. I'm waiting on a little more money to buy an actual PCV valve, and then connect it to the filler cap, and use the vent pipe to connect to the air bonnet.

In Farcas' case he could just use the aftermarket filter vent...or maybe find a screw in vent cap (don't know if those are made) and run a PCV valve to his intake.

 

[jfarcas]

I think it flows more volume, because it has a full 360 degrees to pull air, rather than trying to pull it down through that tubing. Probably not enough to make a noticeable difference in the CFI though. It does sound louder at WOT, though. Pretty cool. Old intake tube acted like a silencer tube on the newer EFI engines. Like i said, it's not really a performance mod anyway, more of a cosmetic mod. Haven't noticed much driveability issue, just that it sputters a bit on cold start up because of the predominance of cold air.

Noall, I'm on the lookout for a screw in PCV cap, may even try modding a few different Ford caps to accommodate this PCV setup.

 

[UnexplodedCow]

Short of finding a 1.6 stamped cover or using the Chinese one, you'd need a screw in cap. I've honestly never seen one.