Thanks for the quick reply. Do you have a picture of what it should look like? And what's the clearance between your MAF housing and the firewall?

 

I pulled everything apart and discovered that I was actually grinding off metal shavings from the MAF housing against the throttle body. It's not going down any further.

 

I put everything back together and finished the install. The MAF housing still isn't clearing the firewall as I would like but it doesn't seem to hurt anything. I reconnected the battery and did a throttle reset. The car started right up. I took it around the block and it drove fine. I rechecked all of the connections when I got home and everything is still nice and tight. So far, so good.

Next up...ECU tune.

 

A wee bit of vaseline wouldn't hurt, that's what I used, however,
I have the OLD NW CAI that has only the 90 degree coupling from the 74mm TB to the aluminum intake tube.
The MAF sensor is mounted in a weld-on bung in the intake tube, there are no clearance problems.

Rob says this older version does not have quite the flow numbers as the new one, but it is a heck of a lot easier to install .......
(excuse the picture quality - cell phone )

 

Thanks for the pic. You definitely have more clearance than I do. I wiggled and wrestled with it a little more, but after discovering I was actually grinding metal off the bottom lip of the MAF housing against the TB inside the coupler, I decided to stop. My MAF housing is still touching the firewall but it hasn't caused any problems yet.

Here's the completed install:

IMG_0930.JPG

 

im not sure why your MAF housing is so close to the firewall but i can make you up another maf housing that is slightly shorter on that end and we can swap them out, please shoot me an email directly.