"The Confines of the Engine Compartment"

[Andy Bettencourt]

It's a gray area that, like splitters, we've all chosen to ignore. IMO, as long as all the bits are physically located within the "confines of the engine compartment", and you're not doing cowl induction or ram air, then it's compliant to the current letter of the regs, despite having been sealed off from the rest of the engine compartment. Its compliance to the spirit of the regs in current context IMO is also OK. But it would be extremely hard to interpret it to the original context of the regs because, as with splitters, they didn't exist back then at our level of competition.


GA

I would only add one thing...like exhaust heat shields and custom intake shrouding, in order to be compliant under the 'intake is free' or 'exhaust is free', these designs must be attached to said free item.

So that Miata intake shroud above looks legal provided it's actually attached to the intake tubing in some way.