Well, here's another consumer alert:
The Cobra style dual quad air cleaner assembly arrivd today and is disappointing enough that it is going back tomorrow.
There were four serious issues with it, despite its high price which I THOUGHT would ensure some level of quality:
1. The plating finish on the top cover was awful - you could see unplated metal in a number of areas
2. It really requires a lot of custom fabrication to actually assemble into a working assembly. More like a "kit" than an "assembly"
3. That advertised 4 inch height, which I had thought might translate into a 3 or 3.5 inch air filter element height between the top and bottom plates turned out to be "extremely rounded up" - it was nowehere close to 4 inches. The bigger problem was the height of the air filter element itself; that was barely 1 4/8 inches GROSS, and after subtracting out the "glued" area top and bottom that could not concerivably pass any air, was a NET of only 1 1/8 inch!! That's not a misprint. One and one-eighth inch net air inlet height.
Since the total circumfrence of the oval air filter was 52 inches, that gives a working area of only about 58 square inches!! That would only suppport 58 x 6 = 350 CFM of air flow into the engine!
4. The air filter used was a paper type, not a K&N type, so actually its flow abilities were even lower.
It is hard for me to believe that back in Cobra days, this type of dual air cleaner assembly was apaprently actually used to feed the Cobra engines. If so, they must really have "sucked" to make the power they did.
I ordered the Edelbrock assembly today, along with a second air filter element for it, and will pick up some 1/4-20 running thread tomorrow that will enable me to, as suggested by others, STACK TWO of the filters (one of the advantages of having a vehicle like "Red" with fairly enormous hood clearance)!
Jim G
