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 Design and Importance of Cold Air Intakes

Cold Air Intake vs. short ram intake

Contributed By: enginebasics.com

How important is colder air?

A question people often think about when looking for an intake is: should I go for the cold air intake, or the short ram air setup? Well let’s take a look at both in this article and hopefully help you come to a conclusion that will work best for you and your set-up.

We have all seen hood scoops, bulging hoods, and long running intakes that can get air from up front of the car. What is the point?

Intake Air Basics

The air temperatures found under the hood of a normal street driven car can be anywhere from 130-180 degrees. The engine hood temperatures of a racecar, or one run on the track can be measured at 180-220 degrees. Next thing to understand is that the average motor gains 1% horsepower for each 12-15 degrees colder the air intake is. This is because cold air is denser, and denser air contains more oxygen, and more oxygen is GOOD.

Conclusion

With the information we have above, we can conclude we want to get the coldest air possible to our engine. To do that we want to make sure our motors intake is breathing in ambient air from outside the engine compartment. How you do that is up to you, but one thing that is often over looked is shrouding the intake to only injest air from outside the engine compartment. With gains as easy as building heat shielding and making sure your engine is getting a colder denser charge, it would be in your best interest to spend the extra time and effort to make a great setup!

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Once you have the engine breathing better on the front end, its time to start looking at better breathing out the back. Check out our article on the importance of exhausts and exhaust flow to gain even more power.

***Remember*** to check for other relevant information in the columns and article tables.

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Want to know more about your particular Make and Model vehicle? All of these vehicles are covered in the tech, maintenance and repair articles found above. Enginebasics is the wiki or wikipedia of car part, repair, how to and tuning information. Let us be the class 101 for your automotive learning.

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Below are just a few of the articles found here on enginebasics.com

Reading Spark Plugs	Camshaft Understanding	Engine Timing	Intake Runner Length	Exhaust Flow Tuning	Camshaft Timing	Engine Cooling Basics	Compression Testing	Forced Induction
Tuning A/F Ratio Basics	Intake Manifold Basics	A look at cooling mods	Camber Caster Basics	Sequential Vs Batch Injection	Fuel Pressure Regulator	EGT Vs A/F EFI Tuning	Engine Start Programming	What is a fuel Injector?
Brush vs Brushless Motors	4-stroke motor diagram	Crankshafts Basics	Automotive Relays	EFI Tuning Basic Thoery Guide	Understanding Electric Motors	Water Meth Injection	Intercooler Basics	e85 Basics
Water to Air Intercooling	Turbo Surge	EFI Air Intake Temp Tuning	Map vs. MAF Sensor EFI Tuning	Engine Start up tuning for EFI Cars	Building an EFI Surge Tank	Intercooler Efficency	Boost Controllers	Engine Oil Weights
Exhaust Cutout Basics	Cold Air Intake vs Short Ram	Engine HP and Torque Basics	Intercooler Sprayer Basics	Turbo Manifold Design Basics	Cryo Liquid Co2 Cooling	Oil Cooler Basics and Installation	Boost by Gear Tuning	Closed Loop vs Open Loop O2 tuning
Changing your own oil	Static Vs. Dynamic Compression	Air to Air Vs. Water to Air Intercoolers	Vented vs Recirculating Blow Off Valves	Engine Intake Exhaust Valves	Wiring a fuel pump relay	Synthetic vs Regular Oil	O2 Sensor Repair Fix	Embrace the TURBO LAG

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