Re: SPICA and velocity stacks

[Richard Welty <rwelty@domain.elided>]

At 08:01 AM 7/9/99 -0400, estorhok wrote:
>I'm wondering where our "moderator," richard welty, is on this subject.  I
>seem to recall a note from him a *few* years ago about modifying a spica air
>box to better the tuning.  Something about cutting out the bottom of the box
>so that the horns can do their work better...

>richard- any results from this experiment??

nothing conclusive.

the premise was that the car in question (an Alfetta) is being set up as an
IT car. therefore, buying velocity stacks from Shankle is at best operating
in extremely "grey" SCCA rules territory -- you cannot add velocity stacks
to a car that doesn't have them stock. the rule is ambiguous about
substituting different stacks on a car that came from the factory with
stacks such as the ones built into the spica air boxes.

however, the stock spica box does have stacks in it, and modifying the
stock box is legal. the idea was to open the box up to move the side of the
box away from the tubes, as in theory the tubes shouldn't have that big
piece of metal in close contact the way they do. i have a crude first
attempt at a modified box, and unfortunately no really conclusive results.

in addition to the rules issues, there are other advantages to the modified
spica box approach:

1) stealth -- it's easy to miss a nicely modified spica box when looking
under the hood of a race car

2) filter availability -- you can still use filters that fit the stock box,
whether K&N or UNI or just stock paper

3) ease of retaining stock ducting

richard

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