Hello All:
My car is missing the original air cleaner and even if I had it I'm finding out that it probably wouldn't clear my edelbrock carb's electric choke.

I have noticed that over the years some of the twin snorkel cleaners had heat or vac operated valves on the snorkel and some do not.

Is the cowl opening just by itself on my 75 SB hood sufficient for air inlet, or would I need the snorkels as well?

Thanks

 

The vacuum valves on the snorkels are for getting heat into the carb when it's cold. There is a tube running from the R/H snorkel to the stove on the exhaust manifold. The left one just closes.

I'd just go with an open element air cleaner if you're not trying to stay 100% original. If you do seal to the hood, the inlet in the hood should be big enough unless you're running monster cubic inches, in which case everything is different anyway..

 

Thanks TimAT,

I have been running an open air cleaner but made some mods to it last night, basically I'm fully enclosing the cleaner assembly and sealing it to the hood only, so all air is coming from the cowl.

I will be using a performance K&N air filter top as my filter element. As you can see in my pic I still don't have the K&N as it won't be here until tomorrow, but I amd using the old air filter within the enclosure to act as a base for the K&N top and also to allow the K&N to be recessed within the enclosure giving me an open gap between it and the top of the hood. Once done it will only breath through the cowl.

[IMG][/IMG]

 

coupered,
I noticed a tach cable coming from your distributor, but I thought that 1974 was the last year for cable tachs and that all '75's had the HEI distributor and therefore, electronic tachs.

I have a non standard '74, it had a '75 engine in it when I bought it, but have fitted a tach drive HEI to it. Now I am trying to fit a distributor shield so it looks stock, but am missing a few parts. Like you, I am looking to fit the proper air cleaner to utilise the cowl induction (that works perfectly), but the car came fitted with a real el cheapo air cleaner. I had to notch the base of this AC to clear the module on the HEI, but this looks ( and is!!!) ugly.

I need to find a drop base AC base that clears the HEI, but will take the small AC element and lid that utilises the cowl induction. Yours looks like it does the job. Great work.

Regards from Down Under

aussiejohn

 

Aussiejohn, you are far from confused or rather join the club

You are correct in all of your comment regarding the 74 and 75 distributor and tach issues. When I bought mine, this is the way it came. From what I gathered the original owner was a Corvette dealer, and when he bought the car new he was not satisfied with the performance out of the box. Back then many "old timers" would have said that darned fangled new tech doesn't work for me, H.E.I. not what I know....so he swapped in a Mallory magnetic breakerless distributor, HO coil and swapped tachs to a cable drive unit from a 74, added a Edelbrock Streetmaster intake (predesessor to the Performer/Torquer intake) and 1406 carb, all this done at at 3k miles on the clock in late 75. It's been there ever since, the car has only 49K miles on it now and everything works great, so I was not going to spend the money to return it to stock and I did not get the original parts when I bought it anyways.

Due to the changes the original AC set-up would not clear the choke on the carb so he put on an Edelbrock drop base AC with a 3" filter (no clearance issues). For my purposes, I kept the lower portion of the AC base and enclosed it for the cowl modification. For your set-up a drop base 14" AC will clear the HEI, mine meets right up to the shielding which encases the distributor, the shielding is from 75 so I know that it would also clear the HEI original to the car and should work for you as well. If you have a stock Q-jet then a stock cowl AC will work.

Thanks and best of luck

 

As far I know you are the first on the Forum to try this so I guess you will be the Guinea pig. My guess is that the cowl duct will pass enough air. The air is under pressure there for one thing. Also the area of the duct appears to me to be a lot more than the venturis of the carburetor. It looks pretty cool. Let us know how it turns out.

 

Thanks Kidvette, I'll report on the results once complete, I had taken out the cowl door flapper and linkage a while back so that it was getting air all of the time instead of just at WOT like original. In measuring the opening I should have a decent amount of air coming through, the cowl opening is roughly 15x2.5 in and should as you mention be under enough pressure under speed to work, we'll see, technically if the aero theories are correct this should actually act as a ram-air system....I hope.

Oh well in the pursuit to be different.
Bill