I have never been happy about the sealing of the REVi with the intake box, and since it is marketed as a Ram Air CAI system, I want every ounce of power out of my Naturally Aspirated motor.

The first time I installed it, alignment wasn't perfect when the bolts were tightened, so there was actually a visible crack between the two pieces near the bottom. The second time I checked it after aligning it correctly with washers, the foam seal had migrated and there was poor sealing everywhere but the bottom of the duct and box.

So I decided that I would seal it myself, using Permatex Blue Gasket Maker Silicone.

The reason I don't post a DIY about this, is because it is a pretty big hassle, but I am going to outline it just for those obsessive compulsives like me.

First I bought a tube of the permatex blue rtv silicone and tried some things, in the end here is what you need:

1 roll cotton non stretchy "Ace bandage" style bandage wrap
3 tubes of Permatex blue RTV silicone
torque wrench
screwdrivers and 10 and 12mm sockets.
soft towel to put over car fender so you wont scratch it when leaning over it
a small flashlight is useful
nitrile gloves (so you wont get silicone all over your hands)
at least 1 popsicle stick
fan to help you breathe

Step 1:

Remove strut tower bar completely. Unscrew both the intake box side and manifold side accordion intake connector fittings and move it out of the way.

Step 2:

Undo the bolts on the engine side of the REVi holding the filter in place, remove blue metal retaining ring, and slide filter out (you may have to disconnect some spark plug wires from their coil connections to manuver it out, be sure to remember the order they are connected if you do!)

Step 3:

Reach hand in and remove foam gasket seal from intake box. To make it easier to see, you can put your small flashlight inside the intake box to give you at least a sense of what you are doing.

What is going to make the next part difficult, is the fact that you wont be able to directly see what you are doing.

Hold on to your nuts, and lets move on...

Step 4:

unroll cotton bandage and cut a section about 3 inches longer than the 'stock' foam gasket. Now cut this in half.

Step 5:

Position the fan to blow air over the intake box and in the direction of the drivers seat.

Put on nitrile gloves and prepare your tubes of silicone. Take your bandage and make fairly thick lines of the silicone perpendicularily across the section of bandage like this:

---------
|||||||||
|||||||||
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Only put down about 5 lines on the bandage, and make sure it is actually stuck to the bandage before one of the lines of goo falls off and goes everywhere.

Be careful not to get any silicone on your gloves, or else you will have a very difficult time from here on because the bandage will stick to your gloves instead of where you are positioning it, use the popsicle stick to mess with the silicone.

Now take a second to orient yourself to where the crack actually is between the box/ramair, its pretty far in there, and you cant see what your working on.

Step 6:

Holding the bandage, reach in and very carefully apply it to the junction. You probably will make a mess, but just be sure to get it in there positioned correctly. If they are clean, use your gloves to mash the lines down under the bandage until it is fairly smooth, perfection is not important in this step, you will be applying a second coat of silicone over everything later.

If your gloves have silicone on them, change them, clean gloves make everything so much easier.

Repeat the same procedure with the other section of bandage, being careful that there is equal overlap on both sides of the bandages around the joint.

Let these bandages dry at least an hour.

Step 7:

By now your probably bleeding from somewhere and have bumped your head a few times....

Let the wraps dry for about an hour, position the fan so it blows in the box.

Step 8:

Now for the messy part, put on nitrile gloves and squeeze a good handful of silicone into one palm.

Now reach in and completely soak the bandage with silicone, being sure to coat under every part that can be loose and apply a good covering over the entire bandage part.

Now you have probably bumped your head a few more times, are dizzy from the fumes and are bleeding from more places due to sharp metal engine parts taking chunks out of your body as you are working.

But heres the easy part:

Step 9:

Let dry 1-1.5 hours.

Then, reinsert the filter, replug the spark plugs if you unplugged them, reinstall the retainer and bolts, put back on the accordion tube, and finally retorque the strut tower bar, 20-25ft/lbs should do.

You are done!

Its amazing to think that my engine actually does sound differently now that I have done that.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I counted about 15 moths stuck on my filter since ramair install about 2000 miles ago.

 

i was just thinking about taping the small gap between the air duct and the air box w/ fancy automotive grade tape, from the inside of course :o

 

So what does it sound like now? Any clips?

 

You could have bought a large Silicone O Ring or just a long pc of Silicone.
Then wrapped it aroung the the CAI. Then sealed it with Silicone.

This way the O ring acts as the seal not the Permatex Blue Gasket Maker Silicone.

Your silicone method may lead to fatigue from heat. I wouldn't want a pc of that being sucked into the engine after it becomes brittle and breaks off.

 

Permatex Blue is good from -65 to 500 degress Farenheit, sensor safe, waterproof, and chemical resistant. Once it sets, with the fabric backbone, it will be as robust a seal as you would ever need for this application.

One of the major problems I found with replacing the foam gasket, was it left a huge open gap about 1 centimeter on the intake box side of the hole. Due to the twofold problem of sealing on both sides and not just the RAM air duct side, I just decided the best approach would be to seal both together as one unit.

BTW, i drove my 8 in moderate rain for about 12 miles once, and when I opened my box I found residue of what was once a pool of water in the box. I suspect that under extended heavy rain use the RX8 will begin sipping water.

 

Okay, its been about 1000 miles, so i decided to pull it apart again and check the seal.

Upon inspection, the seal has held up marveously! No peeling, shifting, or degradation (hardening)..

This turned out to be a great mod.

 

any pics?

 

any noticable benefits.

 

Noticable benefits:

Sound is noticably throatier, most likely due to the silicone providing some muffling of the higher frequencies.

On the interstate, it actually does give me a bit more pickup than I was feeling earlier. It seems to pull harder when speed increases, just as the RAM effect said it should(before I was only partially noticing this, and only when I had just installed the duct and correctly positioned the foam seal), after a while the effect tapered off. Now it really does retain the effect.

When I pulled the box apart the first time(to seal it w/ silicone), it was pretty clean inside for being on my car since april and having the RAM duct installed for a good 3-4 K miles, it was actually clean! Plastic was smooth and not dusty(except for some water residue)! When I pulled it apart this time, there was a great deal more dust(actually caked inside) and small rocks inside. I guess this would suggest that nothing escapes when it enters the RAM tube. I didn't baby my car all summer, and I didn't baby it for these last 1000 test miles. Driving was largely unchanged the whole time.

Another good indicator that the seal is helping is this:

When I'm driving, I dont like to engine brake from high speeds (60+mph), so if I notice a traffic jam ahead of me and I am going this fast, I will shift to neutral until it becomes necessary to brake. I know what some of you will say, being in neutral at 80mph on the interstate is bad, but if I need to accelerate, I always quickly shift into the appropriate gear. 18k miles of this technique, no problems.

Anyways, on how it relates to the RAM duct, is that when i shift into neutral at high speed 50+ mph, the idle drops, then slows greatly in dropping at about 2.5K and hangs at 1.5K. This effect only has happened when I installed the duct and sealed it, pre-duct it would idle as normal when i dropped into neutral on the interstate, at about .9K. Before sealing, the effect would be that the needle would fall slowly from about 2K and hang at about 1K.

I dont have a digicam, but I can try and use my cell phone to take pics.

 

I've got 2 MP3s of the setup, can someone host 2 files for me? Or point me in the direction of a free hosting site?

Anyone who wants the files in the meantime can PM me with their email address, one is 2MB, the other is about 1.5MB

Check my sig for what else I have on the car.

 

Nice!

Big Thanks to Expo1 for the webspace!

3/4 front view of car from right:

http://208.224.136.14/mike/Clag/3-4.mp3

Front view of car:

http://208.224.136.14/mike/Clag/front.mp3

 

bump

 

bump after 4 months? haha

ok, so how is the silicone sealing holding up?

 

I bumped because of this https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-aftermarket-performance-modifications-23/rb-ram-air-duct-questions-problems-75886/ recent thread.

I will open it up to check it though, its probably going to be filthy.

 

Couldnt the same effect be had with just some type of wrap and metal clamps to sinch the wrap tighter around the revi/duct?

 

Like wrap outside the whole duct/airbox interface?

When I took the thing apart the first time to play with it, i found that the other problem besides seal/duct migration on the duct/sheetmetal interface was a 1cm gap on the airbox/sheetmetal side of things.

I dunno, it might work, I just cant really visualize what idea your trying to say here.

 

I was referring to some type of wrap that you could put around the REVi/Duct fitting to keep the air in. It would have to work well with heat and be water tight. Something like this possibly?


http://www.enjoythedrive.com/content/?id=26043

 

Hmm, that definetly shows promise. It would have to be used in the inside of the duct though, just trying to wrap it on the outside would be damn near impossible to get a good seal on both the inner and outter with the radiator in the way.

Just from a chemisty POV, im just a bit interested on how a tape-like substance can bond with itself/plastic surfaces and shrink to form rubber. If it really works thats a pretty awesome invention, but im a just bit skeptical. Its only $9 though, not a big loss if it doesn't work.

 

If you enlarge the photo that is posted on Racing Beat's website it appears that the air duct is inserted into a tube extending away from the air box. Is this not the case?

I do not have either of these products yet so I am just trying to find out where this seal needs to be. I was going to put this wrap on the outside of the connection point between the air box and the air duct.

 

the duct doesn't insert into anything. Your car has an opening that the vfad usually goes through. The revi intake goes into that spot, and has some foamy weather stripping that goes around the inner edges of the opening. The duct does the same from the other side.

 

Really?!! Thats weak. I wonder how many people would not have purchased this product if they knew that to begin with. The picture on their website must be an artists conception... even though the product is already released.

BS.

 

Yeah, when I first went to order the REVi I thought that was the case also.

Sadly, as sql101 said, both sides just butt up against the sheet metal. The seal really is rather poor, and as you drive it really does shift from "nice and aligned" like when you installed it all carefully to " 1 cm gape."

 

Now I know why you were confused about my tape comment. I dont even see how tape would work at this point because you really cant wrap it around anything if it's right up against the metal. Do you see anyway that it might work? I'll definitely try it if you guys think that it's worth a shot. Let me know your thoughts on this because i'll end up buying in the end anyway since there is some solution to this problem.

What would be really nice is if someone fabricated a piece that connects these two components. I am just wishing though.

 

yes you can, just wrap it through the opening into the RB duct by about an inch or so, lay one overlapping strip of duct tape after another

again, it doesn't have to be a perfect seal, you guys are being overly **** ... but the duct tape method will work

 

I would have bought the revi either way. It is the best intake on the market.