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.

There's no longer any "official" method of getting rules interpretation. You can send a request to the ITAC for clarification (http://crbscca.com) but that clarification is really non-official and will only last through the current year and/or ITAC; all it does is indicate to you how the CRB/ITAC would rule should they be asked during a protest/appeal. The other way is to have someone protest you ($25 and you'll probably get that back) and run it through protest/appeals.

GA