When I first looked at the air inlet, I thought it was in a nice location for ambient air. Then I noticed the gaskets to the left and right. The hood rubber seal to the front. To rear of the air inlet it also was raised to seal the area. I placed some oil on the gaskets. The hood was shut then opened back up. The gaskets made a seal with the bottom of the hood. The seals are not 100%, as they have a slight gap to the front and rear. Is this enough for a 1.5l engine operating at peak load? Are the seals for water, sound, or air flow controls?
The front and sides touch the hood. The rear area didn’t touch the bottom of the hood. My guess is it’s real close. Air can flow in the red area and the rear. I might try and measure how much room is left remaining when the hood is closed on the rear section. I think some grease would allow me to mark up to 1/4” of clearance.
@West1 your findings are, indeed, interesting. No company makes more internal combustion engines than Honda so I assume they've got this figured out. What other company would start up their ICE to use up excess energy produced by electric regenerative braking?
Indeed! I can't for the life of me know why they wouldn't have just by-passed the regenerative braking motors and use the friction brakes instead of starting the ICE! Especially when this is just caused for a very short duration of time after the car is fully charged. I'm sure I've burned very little gasoline due to this in the 3 1/2 years I've owned the Clarity, but it is frustrating when it happens. In spite of how much I love this car, this is one of the very few changes I would welcome if it could just be programmed away with a software update!
They have to balance mpg, sound, vibration, epa mpg during warm up, mpg in hot and cold climates. My guess is that the car was tested and focused on EPA testing. I doubt they focused much on peak performance of the ICE engine. So if the air inlet area could be made a little more quite at the sacrifice of a small amount of HP at peak demand. I did test the ICE on this cold day with the elbow removed so that the air inlet was no sucking air from behind the radiator. Warm up was quicker. Peak water temps didn’t change. It did sound louder. I’ll download a dB app and try to get a measurement of oem inlet and with the rubber 90 degree tube removed.
So, how is the air intake pipe fed under the hood with an almost sealed off entry area? I must be missing something.
The area is not fully sealed. The four corners have a small gap. The rear seal appears to have a slight gap when hood would be closed. It has to be very air flow restrictive at full load and higher rpm.
