MatraSport Forum

Having spent over a year on and off removing, refurbishing or replacing lots of parts on the (garaged for 10 years) Murena with a lot of help and advice from Roy Gillard I now have a part assembled car and needed to get the re-built, re-installed engine and gearbox running. However I have a genuine 2.2 S to which a previous owner had fitted a single Solex carb and single inlet manifold and had not kept the original twin carbs and manifold. I wanted to return it to nearer its original spec as I could, so needed all the relevant parts. As you will all know manifolds are as rare as hen’s teeth and Solex carbs and relevant spares similarly difficult to obtain, so it was never going to be entirely original. I had previously obtained a new hi spec camshaft, throttle linkage and twin Dellorto carbs.
 
Question: How to sort the manifold and airbox.   Answer: Make new ones!!!  Ha! !!

First -  the manifold: I managed to borrow a genuine manifold to use to create a jig to then make  an alloy one made up from flat plate and tubing including the extra water way. I test fitted the tac-welded initial manifold to my car last week.
It was a good fit but with tight spacing on two of the stud nuts but all assembled alright and clears the fuel tank and the air box (also on loan) fits in place. Now need to get the faces machined for better clearance on nuts, the vacuum take offs sorted and fully welded and smoothed off.
Hopefully this will be finished in the next 2 weeks. More pics once it's finished.

Second - the air box: Don’t really want to use pancake filters so possibly metal fabrication but probably fibreglass. I will have to make a plug/former and mould first which will be tricky enough. Going to have to be in minimum 2 pieces and need to get pipes for air intake and breather sorted out, then bond 2 pieces and pipes together. This I suspect is going to be a longer messier job than the manifold!
It will probably be Christmas or 2019 before this part is anywhere near ready.

Ian

Very nice work, Ian! Well done. I had a similar challenge and ended up building an airbox from sheet steel. This is how it turned out.

Both excellent  Been bringing mine back from the dead for two years and it doesnt look this good!

'Second - the air box: Don’t really want to use pancake filters so possibly metal fabrication but probably fibreglass. I will have to make a plug/former and mould first which will be tricky enough. Going to have to be in minimum 2 pieces and need to get pipes for air intake and breather sorted out, then bond 2 pieces and pipes together. This I suspect is going to be a longer messier job than the manifold!
It will probably be Christmas or 2019 before this part is anywhere near ready.'

I have fitted an airbox as in the link below to my lotus Europa with twin Dellorto 40's and I can highly recommend it both for noise reduction and professional appearance.  I bought mine with an undrilled baseplate so I could make it fit my non standard carb placing.  The narrower version should fit in the tight Murena space available.

https://www.thepipercrossshop.co.uk/pipercross-px600-airboxes-including-feed-pipe_p23378572.htm

Good idea using the Pipercross air box. I'ts an expensive, but nice kit. I think the 75 mm hose will need a reducer to fit the standard Murena filter box, however. How deep is the airbox inside? Looks like it will be difficult to fit decent length horns. I couldn't find a photo of my airbox with horns in, but here's one showing in the prototype I built from plywood and duct tape :)

I managed to find a couple of pictures of the horns that I have in my airbox.  The pictures are a small size but big enough for you to see it is possible to fit them into the airbox with space to spare.

Anders, I didn't notice that you were contemplating using the airbox together with an external filter.  The airbox actually has a filter in it at the entrance near the shiny aluminium ring in my picture.  You can see that an external filter is not used in the attached picture.

I actually found out about the internal cone filter. It's a neat solution. Also the horns look good. It must be more roomy inside than the Pictures suggest. I checked the specs, and it seems it can take 39 mm horns, which - as far as I remember - is just what I'm using. There's a thing to contemplate about :)

Thanks  8)