I (stupidly) assumed that the air feed that is in the little grill below my passenger headlight, fed straight to the intake pipe for the airbox, as a kind of forced air induction system...

Obviously I'm wrong, as said air feed appears to dump cold air into the bumper, and then the airbox intake pipe seems to pick it up in there somewhere - but it's not direct.

Just wondering if anyone has played around with making the two pipes join up and using it as a forced air feed type intake to the stock air box?

I think it's too small to do anything really useful.

Hmmm, thing is obviously that's where the main flow of air is currently coming in from anyway.... just thought it might be worth a try before spending a shed load of money (and insurance details upgrade fees of course) on an induction kit...

Might have a look at what can be done with it - my only concern is that large amounts of crap might end up being sucked into the airbox? - but then I suppose that's what the filter is for

Just for info, I'm currently using an ITG ring filter in my airbox - didn't find it to be much of an upgrade to be honest

Cheapest kit by a long way for the MPI Sei is the Focus one as seen on eBay. It works extremely well, and (almost) fits out of the box. Yours insurers will probably be OK about it. If not, there are plenty of other ones (and FF and CC doing discounts!)