CAI Tech

[Blackbird_]

Just wanted to toss around some ideas about this that I had, I'm still learning about cars / 3G so if there are concepts I'm missing or something lemme know.

I had an idea a while back (similar to 3GJester in https://www.3geez.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3581) as to what effects putting a water jacket around a CAI would have. I read that thread (a bit lost in the carb talk) but from I take away, any sort of way you are trying to "actively" cool the intake air, you're going to use more (outside) power from somewhere else.

So my thought was to have a custom CAI with a water jacket on it (like a CAI inside a slightly bigger tube and pump water between the two) and have an additional reservoir under the hood for the extra water, and use a small electric aquarium pump. For those in colder temperatures maybe a water/alcohol mix or even coolant? But you'd need to make sure the pump and lines didn't corrode. And design the CAI so you still have your MAF working. I think maybe there are two sides of this coin: reducing the temperature of the air or simply trying to remove the heat. A CO2 or gas barrier might be better at actively cooling the air but who's going to carry an a CO2 tank? Unless you've got nitrous. Water runs into the same problem somewhat as you'd have to keep putting ice or dry ice in the tank if you wanted the intake temps to be significantly lower than ambient. Or could you play around with the diameters of the CAI sections to change the velocity? Make bore it or grind it? I've seen some CAI's with a shield (esp on larger diesel applications) but IMO it doesnt seem like a thin metal box around a CAI will block it from heat that much.

[conozo]

If you wanted to use just water you could probably just use the wiper fluid reservoir. It could save you the trouble of having another reservoir and would save weight/space. Although i cannot imagine that working that well when once the intake manifold is hot it would seem to warm the air up anyways. My idea would be to use a non metal intake manifold like they use in some newer cars to reduce weight, they may also have the benefit of not heating up the air as much. Im just speculating that last part though. Just throwing some ideas around.

[stat1K]

the benefits wouldn't out weight the cost and the work, not to mention if you sprung a leak... you'd have to cool the lower portion and have a bypass in the middle and not cool the upper portion, by that time you've really haven't done anything.

i guess theoretically you could put the bypass at the throttle body but i think that may restrict things too much.

the box does help surprisingly especially if it's like an ARC design... it's really moving fast enough that it doesn't heat up as much as you'd think... i can touch my intake after driving a good distance and it's still relatively cool... the homemade intakes like frantik did and a few other members using mandrel bent pipe from jc whitney and painting it with high temp paint helps a lot, if you really wanted to insulate that you could paint it with high temp then wrap it with header wrap... again though, all this effort is really for naught since you're gains would be in the .XX hp range in my opinion.

[MessyHonda]

another thing that might benefit more is the hondata gasket so the intake manifold does not get hot.
http://passwordjdm.com/PasswordJDM-T...P1648C460.aspx

[stat1K]

troof.

[scars_of_carma]

another thing that might benefit more is the hondata gasket so the intake manifold does not get hot.

Damn... wish I knew about this before I spent all day replacing my intake gasket with a generic one

[MessyHonda]

Damn... wish I knew about this before I spent all day replacing my intake gasket with a generic one

lol...yeah my manifold would get hot...and heat up the cai...now i bet its going to be colder

[87BLUELX-i]

This would most likely be, "not worth it" to do, but it is an interesting concept, but to make a CAI that has a few runs of copper line from the Expansion side of the A/C ran through the CAI itself. The air would be pulled across the lines, just like air is pulled across the A/C coil in your house, and thus dropping the air temp going into the intake. But the gains seen from this probably wouldn't even outweigh the losses of running your A/C compressor. Just a thought though.
As for the intake manifold gasket problem, I hope this Bisimoto gasket eats up some of that heat, I think it will. I ordered one so we will see.

[2ndGenGuy]

There's some supercharged Ford truck (Lightning?) that uses the A/C to cool the intake air. But that's probably because the supercharger heats the air. They gain a metric shit-ton of HP, enough to overcome the A/C. But again, that's supercharged.