To me, one of the most important parts to enjoying a car is the noise it makes, particularly induction noise. Having owned a few Rover K-Series powered cars in my time and run a modified K-Series in my Classic Mini, I know they are capable of making a really nice induction howl. The Elise just wasn’t quite there though as the pretty standard air box and filter setup seemed to be stifling the sound.

Well, quite a long time ago I owned an MG ZS180, I owned 2 actually but ownership of the first one came to an ‘unplanned and abrupt ending’ shall we say. Anyhow I had an ITG induction kit fitted to the MG’s V6 which sounded great and when I sold the second MG I refitted the OEM air filter and kept the ITG bits. So I’ve had that ITG air box and filter for years mostly not in use apart from a short stint on the MX5 before it had to go as there wasn’t room for it when I fitted the supercharger.

Fortunately this particular carbon fibre air box and filter are the exact same model used as part of the S1 Elise specific ITG induction kit so I figured I’d better give it a try on the Elise.

My plan didn’t start quite as well as I’d hoped as I went to remove the ITG foam filter from the air box and it fell apart. It was fine when it was on the MX5 but it is pretty old now and that bit of use clearly finished it off.

So I ordered a replacement filter and some filter cleaner and oil.

Oiling the filter first then. The instructions provided by ITG.

A decent coating of the oil.

Then massage it in.

Before I could fit the new filter and air box, the original air box and filter would have to come out.

Top of the air box and filter removed.

Removing the lower part of the original air box with a 10mm spanner.

All out.

Now I could see how I might fit this into the space, of which there was not a lot.

The Series 1 Elise specific ITG induction kit comes with this air box and an S shaped hose plus mounting bracket all at a not inconsiderable cost. I figured I’d just see if I could work with some of the various hoses I have left from other kits and projects, then go from there.

I ended up using the hose that was part of the MG ZS180 induction kit.

After some trimming and tweaking I arrived at this.

It is actually quite large for the limited space available and finding somewhere for the inlet trumpet to go makes things even more awkward. I wasn’t totally happy with it and knew I’d probably come back to it to see if I could do better and look at linking the side pod inlet to the air box inlet trumpet. It was fine for a while though and meant I could see how it ran and sounded.