Velocity stack designs have a critical mouth radius and square edges kill laminar/smooth airflow. A foam Unipod has the air going through all kinds of direction changes to go through the filter foam. That slows the air and as a result the air has been slowed somewhat and it creates increased suction by the motor pulling fuel. This is true whether a Unipod or a Unifilter is used.
The other critical part of velocity stack design and use is that there is a radius around the mouth in all directions around that mouth that must be obstruction free for optimal performance. So, if you bolt up a filter to the mouth of the stack you defeat the ability or impact the ability of the stacks from pulling the air into the carbs in a linear fashion. The throat diameter at the carbs and the velocity stack height also has a multiplication factor for stack height as well as the mouth opening. The venturi effect is being used to accelerate the air through the stack and that accelerated air naturally affects the fuel draw and the atomization. The skin effect of the material used for the stacks is a factor and is often why you see a good stack with a superbly mirror polished alumunium if made with aluminum.
A screened stack often will provide only insect or rock or clumps of dirt protection and its negative impacts really defeat many of the benefits because of the turbulence introduced in the throat that kill the laminar flow aspects...ok not exactly kill but their negative inflence would be felt. A stub stack, name of extremely short stack marketed by a company works inside a large filter and allows you to have many of the benefits of a stack without running a full stack and requiring as much depth/distance directly in front of the stack.
A stack requires free air equal to the mouth diameter or stack length,
I think the former and not the later...but don't recall off the top of my head,
directly In front of the stack's mouth. Beyond that distance you willbe able to put filter media provided it is not feeding turbulent air...for best operation of the stack. That is why the ITG filter, airbox stack design that a group of SOHC4 members did a group buy after a member prototyped and built a few for 550 and 750 bikes. They were in the 550-650 range as I recall as they were a very nice bit of kit providing a very nice flowing very low restriction solution to overbored and high performance motors allowing those motors to be supplied with all the air fuel mis they would need to tap into their performance potential and still provide a decent and reasonably effective filtration system, rather than running open stacks...
But, all that said, the distance between the intake for the heads and then the carb throat opening on intake side and then the frame tubes behind the tank and motor provide an obstruction for carbs #1 and 4 and that cannot be changed without re-engineering effort. So, this is part of why you often will see different long term differences between the outside carb and inside carb's piston and cylinder head build up of carbor or damage
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