I had a friend suggest that idea a while back but he has not come up with a way to pipe the cold air to the box. I think a little duct work would do the trick.

 

The right way would be to put a small evap.(AC) coil in the box and do some creative refrigeration work under the hood

 

His theory is sound for getting more power. It is a old drag racing trick as well to place some kind of ice pack on the carb/TB.

Others are correct though. The cooler the air going into the engine the more gas the PCM will pump into the engine. One of the reasons our MPGs go down in the winter.

 

Keeping the ice cool in the air box for longer than 45 mim is the challenge. I have noticed my RPMS at idle are up, abought 800 RPM, with out the ice, the truck idels at 500 rpm.

By the set of the pants method, my truck has more get up and go, the real world MPG may not be as good as I thought, But the first time I tried this was at night, +17C, at night air is cool er than the day..

To really test this out, I need +30C and a way to keep the ice cold for at least an hour..

 

Thats why our trucks are so damn much faster in the winter here when its -20 and below.

 

Considering how much air flows into the engine, a small amount of ice would not have much of an effect. As 94rt10ohio stated, a fuel cooler is more effective since there is a lesser quantitiy. The Plymouth I ran in the 60's and 70's had a fuel cooler. Basically a can with a copper fuel line coil inside. The lines were also were also protected from the heat. The can was filled with crushed ice before each run. Just thinking back, I ran NHRA class O/SA (318ci in a full size plymouth) and the national record in 1970 was 13.92. Guess we needed more than just ice, but then again, fuel dragsters just pasted the 200mph mark. I know I rattled on, but thanks for the memories.

 

This is also how my alcohol injection works. Sitting in the dry ice chamber chilling (literally) until I hit boost, then a fine spray of VP M1 Methanol is sprayed into my intake tube. The 40 degree or so alky flashes the air and rapidly cools it creating more power.

 

Packing the air box with ice works, how ever, the short term gains don't make it practical. Ice packs work better than frozen water bottles, But I did figure out that filling the air box with ice displaces the amount of air thats just thier, so the engine is working harder to suck in less air.

Cooling the flue lines makes a lot of sense, but I'm not going thier.

I did find the air box lid was cooler to the touch with the ice packs, than with out, but once again short term is not practical

 

15 years ago my buddy who used to street race his 65' Barracuda experimented with cooling the intake. He had what seemed an never ending battle of races with a 454 Chevelle that they would trade off who won. He ran a 340 with nitrous.

We tried using two bags of crushed ice on either side of the carb (leaked water on the ground and it was a challenge to keep it out of the path of the rear tires). He claimed a slight improvement.

Tried dry ice in bags on the intake one time and got mixed results. We speculated that the out gassing of CO2 from the dry ice was diluting the air charge into the carb. He ran an open element air cleaner. Might have had different results with a closed air cleaner and ducts to the front of the car.

Sometimes just running a snorkel extension from the air box to pick us some cooler ram air from the front of the vehicle will help. I tried this once on my Dakota. I ran a short length of corrugated RV sewer pipe from the air box through the air dam to the right of the radiator, but directly in front of the grill so it picked up ram air. I noticed an improvement on the butt dyno, but I also found that my mileage went down even when I drove normally.

Cooler, slightly humid, denser air = hp and lower gas mileage.

warm air = better mileage.

 

I know the topic was ice in the air box. However, if cooling the air is the goal there are water/alcohol injection kits for naturally aspirated engines.

http://www.coolingmist.com/pagedispl...feature_key=na