ARC style air-box

I've always been a fan of the Abbey Road Company (ARC) in Japan, and in particular their handmade airboxes. They don't make a box for the '97 Eclipse, or any Eclipse for that matter. Sure, I could buy one for an EVO III and make it work, but I decided to make my own cold-air box with a distinct Hideki flair all its own!

Early on I realised the importance of getting the heat away from my air cleaner with my heat shield

Using my old heat shield I made a long time ago as a template, I started cutting and bending the metal to the desired shapes. I then marked and drilled the neccesary holes in my new box for the mounting hardware, sealed the lip with foam weatherstrip (to make it air tight) and cut a 3" hole into the bottom of the new airbox with my hole saw. But why cut a 3" hole into the bottom you say? Well that's because attached to the airbox is a 3" hose that goes straight to my front bumper to feed cold-air directly into the box.

All the air gets fed directly into the box via a 3" velocity stack

A completely sealed cold-air box for my DSM

The unit actually polished up nicely

But Hideki, what difference does the box make (if any)? I have a bluetooth OBD-II adapter for my car that feeds information directly to my Droid X phone and logs pertinent info (and I can actually check CEL codes and/or clear them) well, intake air temperatures is one of the parameters that gets logged. And I'm glad to say temps are 5-10 degress colder than before, and within ambient air temps. My logger also displays horsepower and torque on the fly, and while I don't use it to publish power numbers I do use it to see theoretically if my modifications make a difference. To that answer yes, yes it does.