Am i missing something or should "cold air intake" actually be called "fairly luke warm air intake"

I would think the tube,whether it be steel or abs, gets hot enough in the engine compartment

to warm the air as it goes in the intake. The stockair box does the same thing....so why not

just put a K&N filter in the stock air box ???? .....Or does the "cold air intake" connect to the A/C

magically,or wirelessly some how and cool the air before it goes in...???

Aside from Looking Cool,is there a real purpose ?

 

haha nothing realy, makes people feel beter, you should see they dyno curve, there is about .5 hp gain, one benifit is the air moves more freeley, in the tube no baffling, this is known as one of the most expensive dollar per hp out there...be cheaper per hp to bore out the whole motor...

 

The "cold air intake" aftermarket business is highly profitable.
Mark ups are in the 100-200% range.

If vehicle owners began checking their
MAP sensor (manifold absolute pressure)
and IAT sensor (intake air temperature)
before and after the modification
this whole business would collapse.

But 99% of vehicle owners don't check the MAP or IAT.

They just hear the new noise,
and are happy,
are usually extra happy
if the aftermarket gizmodo is brightly colored.

This is a shame
because there are ways to spend $200-300
that will improve both acceleration and fuel economy.

As far as the common question:
does it matter if the intake materials are conductive metal versus insulating plastic?

The short answer is: it only matters at engine idle where air flow is slow and times for heat transfer are long. At full throttle and rpms above 2000 the airflow is fast enough that the time spent travelling through the intake does not allow for much heat transfer.

Want to know how to calculate this for yourself
and are not afraid of math?

http://www.hrs-spiratube.com/en/reso...als_01_05.aspx

 

Well if you get a REAL CAI then it does help. Anything with the filter under the hood isn't gonna help. It's sucking hot air. My filter is right behind the bumper directly behind the foglight. That's about as far away from engine heat as you can get. The air IS gonna get heated by the tube it's flowing through. But if the air you're sucking is ambient air (70*-100*) andis cooler before it goes through the tube, it's still gonna be cooler when it reaches the intake manifoldthan if the air was sucked from beneath the hood (200*). Factory airboxes are WAY better than most aftermarket "cold" air intakes. The engineers at the factory didn't spend all that time designing the intake to suck air from the fender, hood, or some other location outside of the engine bay just for ****s n' giggles. The only disadvantage of factory intakes is air flow. They are usually pretty restrictive. So if you get an aftermarket intake, and suck the air from outside the engine bay, you are most certainly going to see an increase in power. Every 10* temp change is equal to 1HP! So if you're cooling the air at the manifold by 50*-100*, that's 5-10HP. Doesnt seem like a whole lot, but a true 5-10Hp is quite a bit, and it's a lot more when combined with other aftermarket mods.

 

while it is called a CAI, the only purpose is not to just suck cooler air. It is to suck a larger volume of less turbulantandhopefully cooler air. If you live in the desert at 120 (havasu is hot as f*ck) then pulling cold air is not going to happen, but you can still get more air and due to the design of the intake being just a tube without bends and ribs and such, you will feel a difference.

Dyno charts don't lie

 

You will be surprised how much of a positive effect you can get by wrapping your new CAI with some heat gaurd wrap. People need to think this through.

To say that you get .5 hp gain out of a CAI versus a stock intake is a rather misled. While the numbers gained are not as high as other modifications, you can make this a very realistic power gainer. I started a thread a little while ago about a CAI that I purchased for less than $70. (Pictures are included)

https://dodgeforum.com/m_713323/tm.htm

This kit pulls air out of the fender, which is holding outside ambient temp. air. Will it heat up before it hits the throttle body? Of course. As high as the stock setup? Of course not. The only limit to how well a kit like this will work is your imagination. I have some header wrap left over from a project I recently finished on my race bike. I am going to used the leftover wrap to cover the aluminum piping between the filter and the throttle body air hat. This will certainly drop intake temps. Another advantage about this kit is the fact that air from the engine compartment is seperated from the air being drawn from the fender by a metal divider. Will this metal heat up? Of course, but with applying some more of the heat wrap, it will also be much more effective than simply not being there.

In the end, a CAI can be a great advantage. Would I pay $250+ for one? Why would I when anyone here could buy a similar kit and make it an extremely cost-effecient mod. Let's lowball a HP gain of 5 HP. It has hard to find aperformance gain with the cost ratio (HPollar)of 14:1.

I am eager to hear more opinions on this subject. Some good points have been brought up.

 

I bought my "CAI" off of ebay for less than 40 dollars shipped to me. The whole setup looks alot like the one that virused put on his truck, except that my filter is not as long, and there is no air hat it goes directly in the the throttle body. Yes i knew right off the bat that it is suking air almost straight off the manifold but I wanted to try it for 40 bucks I didn't have much to lose. When i took it for a drive and romped on it two things happened: I liked the new sound, and there was a fairly significant gain in how much harder the truck pulled. I plan on addressing the fact that I don't have a heat shield next to the filter and I also plan on wrapping the tube with header wrap or somthing like it. But my $40 intake has definitly earned its keep to stay on my truck.

 

The sound made your mind believe it was pulling harder. Even with 5-10hp gain from a TRUE CAI, you wouldnt be able to tell by the seat of your pants. Onlya Dyno would show an increase like that.

 

This is correct. The seat-dyno never works. However, he might have felt a better throttle response.

 

maybe