Air Canister - Clearing room in Engine bay

[Cody]

Do you have any pictures?  On my diesel there is also the cooling air pump  for teh turbo  in that area as well as an extra plate of metal that we became aware of when putting in a Gary Lee Spare Tire Carrier.  He hadn't seen it before on other vans and thought it might be because it is a European stock diesel.  I'm not sure that I  have the same amount of area as yourself in that section of the van.  Also curious how much work there is in taking the plate apart and servicing the filter.

I suppose I could stick the K&N up  teh passenger side Air shaft in behind the battery if it's small enough and then I'd have room on teh driver's side for the ESPAR and an intercooler??

[Cody]

To clarify  I thought I'd post some images:

Left side of engine bay where the Air Canister is taking up a lot of room:


If the Canister is removed:




Also  in the way on the Drivers side is the Air Pump  for Turbo Cooling that is tucked in the Rear Air Intake Panel:




Looking at it from the Engine Bay:





Right hand side with Battery in the way:

[the caveman]

Why not take the whole canister and mount it above the transmission.connect it a long,more rugged hose.

[the caveman]

Okay looking at it again ,it is really big. Then why not move the turbo cooler over to the other side over the transmission and get a filter box and mount it where the pump is now??? The turbo cooler pump has to be already running a hose the left side i would imagine ? What is on the right side of the pump in the third picture ?

[blackdogvan]

You could move your battery to under the passenger seat as the gasser vans have??  Did I see a evil Fram filter too?? Mann only man!

[Cody]

Right side of the pump in the third picture is a). the hose going to  teh pipe which directs the air to  teh turbo and b).above teh hose is the opening of the engine bay and you're looking at the brackets for the air canister.

Latest thinking is that the ESPAR D5 can go behind the battery.  Still would move the air canister to  allow for better routing of Intercooler hoses/piping.

Cheers,

Cody

[Cody]

Went down to SynroSerge's place for a very enjoyable 4 day work session.  Serge came up with what to me is the most elegant and functional solution to my needs.  Given that I wanted to move/remove as little as possible but I wanted an I.C. and an ESPAR D5 installed in the engine bay with room for WVO heated filters, etc. and I wanted to keep  the battery out of the back seat area, it was a tight squeeze but we did it.

First a comment about the most expensive part of the I.C.


More expensive than all else combined including shop supplies.
By The Way one of the Beautiful 90 degree 2.5" silicon hoses is for sale.

Sawing into the area at the bottom of the Cold Air Intake Flue:


The completed hole:


Note that the vertical fin of metal in the left side of the picture ended up going as well.


The I.C. sat in the space about like this:


Plumbed in the I.C. (Off of a Jetta TDI - Thanks TuneDub)


Going from the I.C. to the Intake:


Underneath it does clear the Catalytic Converter:






We had to take out the Turbo WasteGate Cooling fan.  It wasn't working anyway and apparently some are of the opinion  that it isn't really  needed anyways (wasn't available on most applications).  I'm hoping to ge it fixed and moved to the right side of teh engine bay  with air supply from the right side cold air inlet flue.

We managed to put the stock air canister back in its place but getting its snorkel to  fit in past the I.C. was tight:


There still needs to be some flashing put in place to  help guide the airflow  so that it goes through the I.C. from the cold air intake flue and not the engine bay and also passes through the I.C. and out the bottom.

Serge is trying to advise against my overengineering tendencies but nonetheless I'm going to figure out some way of getting the $20 motorcycle fan I got from TJ's Cycle (that was a cool looking atmosphere sort of place) to go on top of the I.C.  Not much space though:



Decided to stick the ESPAR D5 under the Battery location.  It is within the orientation parameters of the installation guide although they probably  thought the support bracket would be under the D5.  Serge welded some angle brackets to  the bottom of the battery shelf with the bolts for the ESPAR support bracket to attach to:


The D5 is then attached to the support bracket:


The D5 is held to the support bracket by hook shapes in the bracket and through body screw. I'm going to use strappping to help hold it in place until I come up with a better solution.

I would've preferrred to have the I.C. laying flat-normal to the air flux but it wouldn't fit with the 1 I.C. hose connection that was at an angle.  Perhaps you  could take the 1 straight side off of 2 separate I.C.'s and make 1 I.C. that has 2 straight connections but as well  I think there would have been issues getting the Air Canister to fit with 2 hoses coming out of the I.C. instead of just the 1 I have.

Cheers for comments,

Cody

[VWSmokr]

When the time come for the air cleaner decisions on a couple of projects I have going, I think I'll go see the guys at Vortox  http://www.vortox.com/index.html  

They've been doing large & small air cleaners forever and are very specific about what works with what airflow requirements, established by very serious R & D lab testing. Their industrial design & quality is probably not cheap, but neither are new ngines.

Looks like they have a wide range of dry paper filters, as well as their oil bath units that really flow well, but are very low in maintenance costs. I'm cheap, even when I'm spending a bunch, so I just might go with one of their oil bath units, to save money in the long run.