Cold air intake for a 97 T-Bird 4.6 sohc

Back in the summer of 02 i went on a mission to find a cold air kit for a 1997 tb w/ 4.6l sohc..as most of us have come to find out they do not make one..i was misled about a cold air kit the dealer at the local speed shop said that k&n offerd a cold air kit for $100..i was dissapointed to find out that for a bill the only thing i got was a airfilter and a few brackets..so a buddy and I went to Ace hardware to the pluming section and about 50 bucks later we had a mockup cold air kit..with a 3' section of pvc pipe and a few elbows we created a perfect fit..This works great .the only poroblem i have had with the Ghetto cold air is that you have to extend the wires leading to the Mass air harness.
Last week i noticed that the car was studdering and crapping out at low rpm's .after dismanteling my cold air and searching for all the parts to reinstall the stocker slinkey. the reason for the whole problem lay in my shotty 2am wire job, i had done to the mass air harness...So there is hope to make your own cold air out there, it is a great project to try out..you might be able to make a mockup of a pvc and take to your local exust shop and have them bend a trick metal one..,,
As performance goes at time of install..i installed a helax power tower , msd wires and a set of hotter plugs.after these mods and having some minor exust work done the car really kicks. you will notice a hudge gain in the top end but you will also notice a loss in the bottom..any questions or pics of the cold air ..plz feel free to send me a email.
thanks jt

cut out the inards of the MAF from its housing, use a pipe with the same inside diameter(or larger if you retune the ECU) and then drill a hole in the PVC pipe and stick the MAF organs down into it. You can put the MAF anywhere on the piping then without need for a bracket or extending wires.

People do this a lot on Nissan 240sx's. Its sort of a ghetto way of doing it, but everybody's works perfectly. The reason they use this is to increase the injector size, then they increase the inside of the MAF with a custom PVC pipe proportionate to the increase in fuel injector CC's.

On the stock engine if they turbo it and want more fuel, they put on larger injectors from another nissan 4 banger(37% better flow rate), and increase the MAF inside diameter 37%, this allows them to fool the stock ECU and sneak in more air and more fuel un noticed. It shorcuts having to spend lots of dough to get the computer tuned for larger injectors.