AEM Short Ram Induction

The intake resonator on top of the Mondeo Zetec engine is a classic bad design, more for noise purposes than power. To get good air flow into the Zetec engine we need fast, laminar, smooth airflow. On the Focus Zetec's engines AEM make an intake tube that should achieve this aim. As the Focus is similar to the Mondeo I took the risk and ordered one. I already had a K&N 57i kit fitted and I'm glad I did. It would have been very difficult to fit the AEM without using parts from the K&N kit

Fitting

Firstly the AEM ram pipe is not a direct bolt-on on the Mondeo. The Mondeo throttle body is a different width and sits higher relative to the engine. If you put the AEM pipe as is on the engine, it hits the bonnet hard

1) You need to remove 1cm on pipe at the Throttle Body end to clear the Bonnet

The different width of the focus TB also means that the adapter piece they supply does not fit. The tube is a perfect size match for the Mondeo TB though

2) Cut 2cm off of the smaller connector and use the larger piece to join the TB to the tube. You have plenty of Jubilee clips for this

3) Now as you have shortened the tube the mounting bracket doesn't fit. I drilled a new hole in it and made up a washer to sit over the top to clamp it firmly

Next the Kit does not include a place to mount the Air intake temperature sensor. so I mounted the adapter from my K&N 57i kit.

4) Use the 2cm cut of to pad out the tube so the K&N temp sender adapter fits on the Pipe

5) You can then mount the MAF sensor which is a perfect fit as its going on the K&N 57i piece that was made for it

5) You can then use the original 57i Air filter (Much quieter) or the new massive K&N provided (Very deep roar).

On the focus there is no Brake servo and reservoir to get in the way. On the Mondeo you need to introduce a slight bend at every connector or else it hits the reservoir.

So fitting is not straight forwards. I also have an issue with the cost. The pipe kit is good value and contains very high quality jubilee clips and rubber fittings and the K&N filter. Unfortunately the shipping cost amounted to more than the value of the pipe. Especially when customs tried it on and charged 45% of its value in duty. So it doesn't work out cheap

First Results

So how does it feel afterwards

a) Its bloody noisy. The very large K&N really can suck some air. On hard throttle you get full race car roar, far louder than the exhaust

b) Huge flat spot between 3000 and 4500 rpm, then it hits hard

c) Engine feels not so lively

d) Huge extra space in engine bay and you can now easily reach the throttle cable top to rev the engine from in front

So not so good, but obviously the engine was not expecting all this extra air, so it was off to London Superchips (See links) for Dave to work his magic and re-fuel and time the engine using the brilliant Unichip

Tuned Results

Wow, the first dyno run with the new intake compared to the last old run was an eye opener. 9HP down across the mid range and 4 HP at the top. No wonder the engine felt slower. Was this a good mod I was asking myself. Certainly not one the average Mondeo should do unless you have your fuelling changed.

Then Dave worked his magic and the life come back. As you can tell from the chart below the filter was worth around 5HP across the upper end. and was a little down at 3500 (about 1 HP). So I was happy. The Molemobile recorded 166bhp at the wheels (corrected) and must be around 192BHP at the flywheel (That true 200BHP is soooo close!)

So The mod is worth it if you can tune the car to match it. It must be cheaper however to build your own version. (The AEM tube does look nice though). Other benefits are I've had two people now tell me how good my big Turbo unit looks 8-)