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Custom Airbox and Pressure Differential Sensor Integration

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35:53
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What happens here

The speaker details his role in fabricating the "hard parts" of the system. This involved creating an airbox assembly that could sit within a race car's hood space. The goal was to move air through a cowl, down to the carburetor, and out through the tailpipes. Gino was responsible for the electronics, designing a "pressure differential" system using small brass tubing with tiny holes. These tubes were connected to a system that measured pressure differences, translated into data using a MathLab program. The airbox also featured adjustable panels (Slugger's Insert) to fine-tune airflow, and the inner shapes of the airbox were extensively modified to optimize flow characteristics.

Goal: Fabricate the physical airbox structure and integrate sophisticated pressure sensors to measure airflow dynamics through the cowl and to the carburetor.

Tools and materials

  • Adjustable panels — Modifying airflow within the airbox for testing
  • Aluminum sheet metal — Constructing the custom airbox
  • Brass Tubing — Creating the pressure differential sensors
  • Computer — Interpreting sensor data
  • Drill — Drilling tiny holes in brass tubing for sensors
  • Fabrication tools — General construction of the airbox
  • Soldering Iron/Torch — Soldering brass tubes together
  • Standard air cleaner — Basis for some airflow testing
  • Transducers/Sensors — Converting pressure differentials into electrical signals
  • Wiring/Cables — Connecting sensors to the data acquisition system

What they say

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Clausmire and I and I think HJ Morgan got together and we started figuring out how how we're, you know, how do we divide up to divide and conquer this and Gino was really good with like the electronics, you know, with all this stuff and understood how to make sensors and everything. So at that point, what happened is I took on the the heavy the hard fab part of like we got to create something that goes in the car that will move air, you know, through the cow down the carburetor and out the tail pipes. And Steve never specified any of that, but I figured since we're doing it, we might as well make it all make it all happen. We all kind of came up with this concept. I think again it was Ha Morgan, myself, uh John Cosmmyer and Gino and you know Steve would come by and offer his his opinion on some stuff and you know that all worked out but we'll come back to this clear air cleaner lid lid later. It's pretty neat. Okay. So, Gino had came up with this system since we didn't have any sensors, you know, at the time or anything that we would get this small brass tubing and drill these tiny tiny little holes in that stuff and then he would hook these tubings to it and it was a it was a pressure differential type setup where you there's two brass tubes that we soldered together. So, the air going in this side versus the air coming in that side. And then John Cosmmyer and Ha Morgan wrote the program. I think it went in like a mat lab where it would change like colors and stuff that was way above my pay grade. But my job was to, you know, was to build all this stuff. And this is one of the test air cleaners that we actually ran. And it actually still has Slugger's name on it, which is the the Slugger insert. So, and then there was another part another part of it that came basically way down here and dropped up and came back up. And you know, kind of the funny thing is after we did all this stuff, we we we put two cars and went home and did all kind of crazy stuff once we got this thing working. And then they came out with the cow rule where everybody had to have same cow, you know, because people that don't work hard in racing get rewarded by having the same stuff as people run out front, I guess. I don't know. So, this is one of one of the test cows, but that's how all that works. So we had to build all of this. These are all these pressure differential sensors that Gino, you know, had speced out and and HA and John had wrote the program to translate the pressure…

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