EMB,
Volant has a really nice CAI available now.

If you are talking about the new Jetchip, don't waist your money. The report is already out on the Jetchip on another forum and no real gains. Something like 2/10 of a second and 1mph.

MikeyB

 

Mike,
Was looking at the Volant site this morning...
Waiting to see if the HP gain is worth the hassle...
I am not a big Jet fan...had one of their chips a few years back...didnt do much other than change the shift points...and for what it cost, I can get that using the auto stick feature for free!

Ed

 

EMB,
FYI. This forum is doing a group buy for the Volant CAI. http://www.dodgemagnum.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5149

MikeyB

 

Mike,
Removed the water trap/silencer yesterday...it works, mine had about 2 cup of water in it...
Did a little test, measured the outside air temp versus the intake temp at the elbow...
at idle it got up to 105F...but at 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60mph, it matched outside temp within two degrees, so whats already on the car works....went back under the car, did a little measuring, and for the cost of a K&N factory replacement filter I can make the exact same set up Volant sell, with the intake in the front grill...

about the only reseversation I have is getting water in there...I measured, and the factory intake's trumpet was at the same height as the top slot in the front grill...which might be why they put the water collector in there with the silencer.
I might mock up a collector box in the same place, duct it to the front grill, and see what happens...

I cant see where anything on the market except the Volant draws true cold air, the K&N and Airaidz(sp) seem to do nothing more than replace the factory set up with a cone filter in a open toped box and a pretty tube...kinda like fliping the lid on your old factory air cleaner when we were kids...sounds better, but dosnt do much for performance.

What I am after is getting all the air from outside the engine compartment, which should, in theory, increse the HP by a few...

Had a buddy of mine, who is a design engineer, look over the factory filter box, the K&N and Airaidz, and the Volant, and he came to these conclusions...

The factor filter box is fine, its voulme is ok for the engine, the only real restriction is the filter element itself.
Both the K&N and Airaidz do nothing more than replace the factory filter with a "better" filter, neither actually provide true "cold" air.
The Volant does provide cold air, but the vent in the front of the box will draw engine compartment air too.
It is better than stock only because it too, uses a after market free flow filter, the volume of air in the box is the same as the factory unit.

The big box in the factory "ear drum" is for water collection, the silencer does restrict the volume of air the engine can draw, and for the reason stated, it make the car quiter under throttle.

The only way to get true cold air is to install a duct to the bottom of the factory box, the factory tube and box are sufficent...or install a working shaker hood or ram air hood with intake.

I dont want to make this thing look as fast as it is, I like the fact that it is a sleeper, looks like a little black station wagon, so no holes in the hood!

My buddy is pretty good at this stuff, he has a MGB that will run 100mph plus all day long,,,he cast a intake that takes two Weber down draft carbs..so he knows his math.

He said if I was to buy a replacement for the factory filter box and tube, the Volant was the only one of the three I showed him that would make much of a difference, but he suggested I remove the ear drum, and replace the stock filter with a K&N first and see what that does.

Ed

 

EMB,
How did the car sound with the intake silencer removed?
I have been reading the same thing about the CAI vs. the factory setup. DC engineers did a pretty good job with the intake system. For $40 you do the same by just installing the K&N drop in airfilter. This is the setup I'm going with.
Once the intake silencer is removed I believe it would be pretty hard to get water into the filter box unless the car is driven in some really high water.

MikeyB

 

At idle, not much of a difference, unless you had heard it before the silencer was removed, you wouldnt think twice about it..
Under throttle, sounds like a powerful V8 should.

The only thing I can claim is the throttle seems to work faster..no real figures to back that up, just "feels" like it revs up faster.

Going to do a little experiment today...drive with the filter as is, minus the ear drum...then pull the filter completly to do away with as much restriction as I can..might even take the box out and use just the hose..see if I can tell what, if any, difference there is.

Where the ear drum hole is through the rad support is high enough that to draw water in there would require you to drive through water deep enough to enter the car...I dont think anyone is going to do that!

Depending on what I find today, I might just install a K&N factory replacement filter, and leave it like it is, minus the ear drum...

The more research I do, and the more playing around under the hood, the more I think what comes from the factory is pretty much as good as it will get...about the only mod my engineer buddy said would make a drastic difference would be changing the exhaust, and based on what he knows, he suggested just swap mufflers out for less restrictive ones, the suitcase is a assembly decision, its quicker and cheaper to build the car with it as one unit...he thinks you have two seperat mufflers in there, wrapped together,,,as he said, if they were really just one big muffler, why the X or crossover joint?

Until we get a way to program the on board to suit our wants...the rest of the bolt on stuff is just for show, prettys to put under the hood, and exhaust to make a nice noise...but no real noticable HP gains at speed...

Will let you know how the afternoon experiment works...
Ed

 

Okay,
My buddy called, no major project needs his attention, so he wants me to come over with my car and play…

Got there, he had all his neat measurement goodies out…and a few ideas.
He started by making some basic assumptions.
One, this car was designed to the medium…it is a fleet vehicle, meant to appeal to a broad range of buyers, and built to perform to those specs…

With that in mind, he spent last night coming up with some simple tests to see if it can, in its current configuration, really be tweaked to perform noticeable better.

Two major points of interest: air in and exhaust out.

He pointed out to me the fact that you could run this engine minus any filter or tube…and no matter how much you improved the amount of air, or the temp and density of the air entering, unless you used a forced induction system, a blower or turbo, your stuck at a certain point based on the amount of used air you can blow out the exhaust.

He poked a flow meter into the resonator, had me idle, then rev it…came away with this.
Factor suitcase muffler is two mufflers...there was a small difference from the left to the right side…it is restricted, but not as much as we think.

Unless you change the pipes from the cats back, not much gain will be added.
He suggested a set of balanced headers, bigger cats, and 3� pipes.
The stock resonators do not make any difference in the performance.
According to him, the main purpose of them is to break up the harmonic wave…I made him dumb it down for me, he said a straight pipe on this engine would vibrate hard enough to require ear plugs for the driver…the resonators add bass to the exhaust, and break up the vibration…
And, he said that after looking over the cut away drawings for the 5.7 Hemi he found on the net, this engine needs some back pressure, not a lot, but some.

So, we have assumed that, until there are headers and bigger cats on the market, about the only thing exhaust wise that will make a difference is a free flowing muffler, and the best that will do is improve throttle response some, no usable HP gain.

He had a neat little stack he made up last night…remember the velocity stacks on the old six packs we ran back then?

He has a sheet metal tube, with big hose clamps around it…so he could adjust the cone…surprise….the intake on the engine is 3.5�, and with a 24� stack with a max opening of 4�, you an get a 2 to 3% increase in the velocity of air depending on the length of the tube.
Any opening over 4� showed no change from running the engine with nothing on the intake…and from 3.5� down to a 3� restriction made no difference at all versus running it with the stock air box and filter.

He looked over the ear drum/silencer, and we decided the main purpose for this thing is to collect water and debris, the neck on it is a small trumpet, the first, or smaller drum is to break the flow downward into that drum or box, which cuts the intake sound and gives any water drawn in a place to go, and the second big box is to store whatever the small box catches, and give it a place to evaporate.

It is basically a back-*** ward resonator with a water trap.

The only draw back we found with the home made stack was condensation on the outside of the tube near the intake...he writes it off to the tube being metal and the increase in velocity and density is providing a cooling effect…not enough moisture to cause a problem down here, but he said at higher elevations it might make a difference.
Also, the factory temp sensor is on the wrong side of the elbow, it interrupts the air flow around the bend, according to him, it needs to be either in the intake neck proper, or farther out in the tube.

So, the results of a afternoon of watching this guy do math on a yellow pad that I couldn’t do with a calculator…here is his conclusions…totally un scientific as they are.

Short of putting the car on a dyno, and bolting on this stuff….

All the items we discussed, CAI, Borla mufflers and the like, will make no real usable HP gain at the tire…you can get a faster throttle response, but the cars actual top end gain is negligible.

If you had the money, and the resources…
3� balanced/tuned headers, with larger cats and tuned mufflers, with resonators, a velocity stack style intake tube, hooked to a ram air intake, will net you, according to him, at the tire HP gain somewhere between 5 and 10 useable HP with the computer left as it is.

Until we find a way to reprogram the on board to lock settings where we want them, unless you drive the heck out of the car all the time, the on board will slowly default to its factory settings…

So, in a nutshell, you can bolt on all the goodies, and get a quicker short time result, but by the time the car has reached 60/70mph you have over run the resources you added.
Beyond that, any gains you get would have to come from the computer, which at the moment, is something we cant really change.

Basically, you can make the car quicker, but you can’t make it faster.

He and I concluded that right now, all the bolt-on goodies are nothing more that eye and ear candy.

His conclusion was what you and I discussed this morning, pull the ear drum, install a K&N factory replacement filter, and drive the crap out of the car until someone comes up with a real “chip� or a way to reprogram the on board computer.

Once that hurdle is over come, then the bolt- on stuff will result in useable gains, but not until then.

Ed

 

Good info Ed!
I have only one exception to his recommendation. 3" exhaust pipes. 3" pipes is fine for single exhaust for this size of engine, but not duals. 3" duals will kill the low end torque.

MikeyB

 

Ed,

Great posts. Thanks for sharing!

You've really hit the nail on the head here. I think what we're all doing here, really, is playing with our toys. Heck, even if we were getting any HP out of it, its not what I would consider meaningful since the computer soaks it up. I ran some great 1/4 mile times but the throttle has already slowed down after a week's worth of city driving... and I'm not so sure I want the computer to keep the car race-ready. I just dropped another $40 into the tank.

The first thing I loved about my K&N intake was the sound. As in "oh cooool!" and not "my computer analysis indicates a 12.8 horsepower increase with a commensurate increase in low end torque".

Without a computer mod -- ideally a reprogrammer that would let us 'profile' a car for race or commuting -- all we're doing is seeing how fast we can run out the leash.

But like the dog on the leash, we keep on pulling

 

If you would like to see the inside of the muffler and resonators, go to:

http://www.dodgetalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44840