Well, the air cleaner came in yesterday, but like many things in hot rodding, it needed a little "rework". In other words, it didn't just bolt on.. This part was much worse than most because it didn't just not fit my application, it wouldn't even work as it was intended on ANY application. The dang filter wouldn't fit in the housing and it was off by a bunch!

I wanted a large oval finned aluminum dual quad filter similar to the old Cobra filters, except I wanted fins all the way across the top. The only one I could find made like that was sold by Speedway Motors under their house brand. The quality was, uh let's just say, less than great.

I knew that I was going to have to make a few mods to get it to fit under the hood, so I bought a "scratch and dent" item off of their Garage Sale page to save some money (cause it's ridiculously expensive) . I even called to check the condition before I ordered and was assured that it only had a couple of minor scratches, but that the filter element was fine. Well, it came in and had a partially crushed filter and I know why. The filter is too long and wide to fit in the recess that was cast for it. Someone attempted to force it into the housing and crushed it. So, before I could even attempt to get the thing fit to my car, I had to make the filter fit the housing.

Thank goodness I have a 2-axis CNC mill. Doing this job on a conventional mill with a rotary table attachment would have taken at least twice as long. Getting the pieces tied down to the mill table without breaking the thin castings was tricky and cutting it with a less than sturdy setup was a nail biter. It may look tied down well, but I didn't want to cinch the clamps down too tight and break the casting.

I even attached a dial indicator to the table so that I could monitor for the setup slipping. As it was, it took a long time to cut because I didn't want to get too ambitious with my cuts. Where most parts could be done in 1 cut, I took several lighter cuts just to be on the safe side.

Here is what I started with. You can see that with the filter element stuck in one end, that it hung over on the other end.