you dont want air from outside inside your engine bay, unless you live in a clean arctic world, just makes everything dirty, and i hate cleaning

 

as previously stated, the clean way to get a cai would be to relocated the battery, but we wanted it to be clean and easy to do, there are alof of other problems that arise when u relocate the battery.

 

Just wanted to correct some things that have been stated....First - All plastics are more heat resistant then metals. They are just not a good conductor. Secondly - Carbon Fiber is not easy to break if built correctly. I design high speed aircraft out of it every day.

 

Ok I took my car for a good drive and drove it really hard the last 5 mins to get it nice and hot..

I have the stock intake, so I took a measurement off the filter housing and surrounding area and off the grill/intake and surrounding area.

I came up with a 10 degree F difference. 70 vs 80.

Now keep in mind my infared thermo gauge only reads surface temps, not air temps. Also I have to open the hood to read the temps. So although its not an exact measurement, it is a measurement.

Now I should speculate that the back near the exhaust felt hot closer to the exhaust but when I got closer to the air box it was pretty cool and I noticed you can see the ground from underneath. I think when driving a lot of air does make its way up there to cool and provide air for the sri owners out there, as well as the snorkel if you leave it in.

So i really don't think its a big deal or difference unless you have a high horsepower car which we don't really do we??

 

granted the heat resistant vs. metal is more heat resistant, but the debate was over the type of plastic used. or at least the point I was trying to make. But you sound like you have more experience.

Was I correct about high temp vs. heat resistant plastic?

and yes CF is designed correctly can hold up. lol but i always see posts of body kits in pieces, most likely examples of either poor design, bad driving, bad luck, or all of the above lol

 

Sorry for my ignorance, but what kinda problems could arise?

Also, im no car motor genius guy, but wouldnt the purpose of the SRI to force more air into the mix. Wouldnt a slight temperature difference be pretty well negligble. I mean I know the whole physics(possibly chemistry) behind combusting colder air, but it really seems like the temperature difference, whether above the manifold or not wouldnt be all the different, especially with forced cold air from the speed of the car cooling it. I am assuming that the hood that RRM has made was engineered to remove warmer air and flow cooler air into the engine bay.

But, again i say, im a total engine tuning noob, so im just assuming all this.

 

there are two benefits I beleieve with the COLD over the SRI.

What you will get here and anywhere else, is that there will be people who swear by one or the other. Personally a COLD AIR INTAKE would yield better performance.

The logics behind it are simple. Side by side assuming the pipe is designed properly for the COLD AIR *no air tumble. The COLD AIR INTAKE Vs. a SRI will give you cooler air, its by no means cold. Its just air taken in outside the engine bay. Now for the average car, engine bay temps dont really blaze that hot. But if your running a more advanced set up and drive the car aggressively yielding high RPMS, then those few extra degrees in an enclosed space will be gine to chip away at SRI performance.

Second, the ram effect is enhanced with the elongated piping. CAI, suffer from an intital power loss in the low RPM, but the trade off is with a stronger mid and upper RPM band. a SHORT RAM, will yield a balanced all the way up the power band but from what i have seen from dyno shoot outs, generally a CAI will edge out a SRI.

again its something thats hottly contested and you will have to do your own research to make sense of it all. But there is no doubt, that both SRI and CAI are way better options then a stock system.

a STOCK system does not do anything for heat due to the poor circulation, and the non areo dynamic black box inside and a restrictive filter in the middle of it will do little to help performance.

On the positive side a stock box will reduce sound lol for those who love the sound of a loud Machine gun engine go with the upgrade pipes man

 

I have nothing more to add, but I'd just like to say that I'm happy to see a nice mature discussion.

 

Typically the ram air effect is not that large with any intake. You would need to be going really fast. A SRI usually has shorter piping which would reduce the head losses. A CAI typically has larger piping nad larger head losses. The best option would be to lower the under hood temps and go with a short pipe. Make sure though that your MAFS is not too close to a bend. You want the flow to be laminar near the MAFS for an accurate reading.

 

This may differ from BlackGTS's take on it, but from my understanding, the ram effect is self induced. what i mean by that, is its the vacumm force at higher RPMs that exponentially increase the air volocity within a pipe.

You dont really need to be going fast, its really a matter of RPM speed. I am no expert on placement of the sensor so i cant comment on that. But I know this from my current setup on my Mazda and mesure the CFM air flow thru my piping.

Its a funny story, I gave my car to a friend of mine to do some upgrade work on the intake manifold and for the longest time i thought i had a leak somewhere in my CAI setup. but actually, with a intake manifold upgrade / modification, he was able to increase CAI intake induction by about 30%.

You can hear the sound for yourself, it sounds kinda like a gas main if you are close to it. and although it sounds like its leaking, its actualy not, the sound you are hearing are from the filter tip all the way down in the wheel well. Thats why i bring the camera closer and the sound doesnt get louder along the pipe towards the engine. At idle air flow is increase slightly, but under load there is a air vaccum collaps that draws air in. unfortuantly its hard for me to stick my head out the window at the engine bay while I gun it.

http://www.nysedaytraders.com/other/carsound.wmv

This modification in my Mazda will be incorporated into my EVOSOUL Lancer Custom CAI and One other lancer, when i find a volenteer of a brand name CAI to ratify the results of a dyno.

Project "COBRA".

 

That's not ram air, that's just the intake doing its job. Ram air works as the name implies by forcing more air into the intake.

 

I guess the term Ram is a nebulous word to use., man i wish i took science class a little longer.

why couldnt there be more hot girls in physics

 

yeah there is not any extra force in a CAI. The only way to get an added benefit is to tune your intake system perfectly so that the pulse the valve makes from opening and shutting comes back and hits valve when it is opening in order to push a little more air in. Otherwise the best thing to do, is to reduce your losses by having a shorter pipe and one with less surface roughness, and to get the coolest air possible so you can have the benefit of slightly denser air.