WARNING: Shit's about to get ghetto up in here.
So I've been working on this aftermarket intake pretty much since I got the Jeep. I never wanted an aftermarket intake for a Jeep application, but it is kinda required when you relocate the washer fluid bottle. On a WJ, the OEM washer reservoir is inside the LF wheel well in front of the tire, stupid design. If you run 32s or larger, your tires hit it and crack it. Most WJs require removing the stock air intake system and putting a ZJ washer bottle in that location which is what I did. The ZJ bottle fits there and has all the necessary holes drilled for the washer pumps and fluid level sensor already.
Here's the OEM washer bottle location:
If I were to re-do this whole project, I would have left the OEM air box and built or bought a custom washer bottle and put it somewhere else. But I didn't.
So the very first intake I bought was something like this:
This is one of the stupidest products anyone has ever made. It leaves the air filters at the highest point in the engine which is the warmest and the metal retains heat. If I went to drive the Jeep and then got out and touched the metal, it was about as hot as a stove, near impossible to work on, Stupidly designed product. The only reason I touched it is because the boots kept falling off, cheap shit. So then I switched to a plastic DIY one, this one worked pretty good, but it was a little flimsy and kept rubbing on the steering gear box, I was never really happy with the placement as far as keeping it secure:
So recently, I modified this and put the intake up higher, it wasn't as hot as the metal one and it cleaned up the area, but as temps have gotten higher this summer/spring, I can just tell it's not working as well as the previous one:
So here we are today. I decided to reinstall the factory snorkel tube that goes from the grill area to where the OEM box used to be. And I picked up a badass rubber ABS pipe reducer from ACE hardware that fit perfectly:
I re-routed the intake similar to the previous location:
And then I went 'in da hood' gansta on this thing. I used flame retardant insulation for building fireplaces and wrapped it in aluminum foil and secured it around the intake. As ghetto as this may seem, I used this same method on a 3 day backpacking trip and kept 10 beers cold with no ice. Cold beer on the 3rd day with no ice is amazing. Thermally, it works. It looks like shit, but it really does work:
So that's the final product. I really need to get this out on a hot day to see what happens, but I really hope it works. And no I wasn't smoking any Colorado Green during this project.
