Member Credit: bone-daddy
Ok so I have a Fujita CAI on my 04 SE, but my splash guard was broken a few winters ago, which a) I am too cheap to buy a new one, and b) makes getting at my air filter a LOT easier, but it also lets water in if I go through a car wash with and under body sprayer, so to remedy this, I built my own heat/water shield, and this is how I did it.
What you will need:
– Sheet metal or equivalent
– Rivet gun and rivets
– Drill bit sized for your rivets
– Something to cut the metal (snips, saw, cutting wheel)
– Vise
– Paint (optional)
– Grinder (optional)
I did the initial cutting before I figured I should take pics, but mainly this is how I did it.
Step 1:
First you must cut your main shield portion, I don’t have measurements but this is easily figured out by holding your filter next to the metal and seeing how tall you want your shield, once you cut it to that size, wrap it around your filter and see how far around you want it to go.
Step 2:
Now you need to cut the strips to rivet onto it, I would recommend starting with at least a 3 inch strip, mine were just shy of that and I wish I had made some longer ones, so I could put two rivets in each, but alas, I didn’t.
Step 3:
Once you have your strips, put them in a vice and then bend them into an sort of Z shape, with the end that attaches under the hose clamp only a slight bit larger than the width of the hose clamp, and if you can, put a slight bend on the very tip so it can’t slip out of the clamp. Test the fit by hooking the strips into the clamp while on the filter and hold the shield up before the next step.
Step 4:
Drill your holes and rivet the strips to the heat shield. Make sure the drill bit is the correct size for the rivets you have, if the drill bit came from a case where they slide into a metal index, you can test the rivet but sliding it in, you do not want any play for a secure fit.
You should now have something like this:
And if you please, you are done! However, I was not please, so I painted mine with truck bed liner. Also note I rounded off all edges with a bench grinder since I used 1/8 inch aluminum and a cutoff wheel on an angle grinder to cut my pieces, which left nasty edges.
Total cost of this was $0.00, I used an old sign backing for the aluminum, borrowed the rivet gun/rivets, and had the bed liner in the shop.
Comments are closed.