Is it worth it to buy an aftermarket cold air intake or is there an easier way to just make one without it looking ghetto. I have welding and fabricating experience but I've never met some that made a cold air intake for their carbureted engine.
first we ask, "why?" then we ask for pictures of the engine in the car, etc. Used to be some race cars had ducts running to either the front of the car where a headlight used to be, or to the cowl if it's new enough to have an air plenum there as part of the original ventilation system (which I think yours is not). but mostly the "cold air intake" thing is used on modern cars, and isn't really relevant.
Never looks good on either a Rod or Custom. Not a whole lot of point to it, either. I mean will it really improve your horsepower by any perceptible amount?? Cosmo
I'm looking for an easy way to get a little more hp out of it. I was wondering if a cold air would be a clever way to go or if I should just buy a tunnel ram.
Most mods to successfully boost performance work well because of the synergy with other mods. Outside of some efficieny things like headers, good spark and tuning single change mods are probably best in the 10-15% range (boost and nitrous excepted). If you look at the efficient RPM range for a tunnel ram, you'll see this isn't the best selection assuming that you don't have an all out race engine
I can tell you, from experience, ramming cold air into an engine, carbureted, or injected is worth free horse power. During the 1960 El Mirage season I ran our Ranchero tow truck at all 5 lakes meets. The Les Ritchey built 390 ran a best of 139 and change. For the last meet of the year I fashioned an air ram from some cloth wound flex tube. I hose clamped it to the carb intake and just stuck it in the phony scoop on the '58 hood, after I opened it up. Without another change, the best speed was a bit over 144 mph. I had run a best at Pomona of 98 mph. When I went back to Pomona after the lakes season, the car ran 103, and I actually beat Tim Woods for the A gas trophy in his '49 Olds coupe!
Yes it does add HP. Added the old under the bumper twin scoops kit from JC whitney with the long tubes going up to an old air filter housing that I brazed two large coffee cans into and reduced my ET by 0.20. A two tenths reduction is nothing to sneeze at for the cheap parts this took.
Here in Houston, I like to go for an early morning ride. Just to feel my car react to the cooler air. I'm talking dawns early light. I can hear and feel my engine running better.
Yes my GTO would tear up the road when I hit second gear on my way to work had a 425 olds engine out of a old ninty eight a th 400 out of a pontiac wagon with shift kit and some mods a friend of mine did and a 3.55 twelve bolt posi with coil over shocks that car was bad ass and wish I could get my hands back on it but that early morning crack o dawn air up in Connecticut was good for a few ponies no doubt tearin up second oh what memories I am re living rite now, thanks this was very uplifting today Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Cold air makes a big difference. In fact it's the only thing with that much effectiveness for the trouble it takes. Now that the mornings have been chilly, even my honey notices a big difference in the way her car runs. It's just an OT supercharged Grand Prix with a few tricks but she drives it like she stole it- that's my girl!
There's been a few things like water injection. The the turbo & inter cooler guys will spray the outside of the inter cooler to get that as cold as possible.
Yes, Sperco made a "water injection" system in the 80's. It just sprayed water, or alcohol mist in the air intake. It was marketed for turbocharged engines, but could be used on anything.
I have a thread on water injection here. In and of itself it doesn't do much on a basically stock engine, a little but not much. However if you were to plan on taking advantage of a alcohol/water injection it does great at preventing detonation. That means you can run high compression on cheap gas, or more boost, run a bit leaner, and more aggressive timing - which each one of those will get you quite a bit in performance but to be able to take advantage of all of them combined is magical - just add water. If you are environmentally conscience, water injection also lowers combustion chamber temps enough to significantly drop NOx emissions.
Mine is partially home-made, I'll pm you pics later. I wont get involved in engine threads on-forum...
From that link I posted above. 1964 prototype gto ram air pan was good for 18 hp , found thru extensive track testing. This was cobbled together for a quicky run at the track by the engineers from scrap sheet metal. Check the link
spectre makes a dual intake 4bbl air cleaner with ram air tubes. u can get it on eBay for around 150. doesn't look too ghetto. not authentic traditional parts but will perform great and look clean. probably the beat price for a dual ram air cleaner and tubes Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
I would show mine but its hillbilly anyway my car picked up 0.20 when I did it on my junk at the strip. I also went from 102 MPH to 105 buy changing the collector length.
Keep the hose short and don't use metal for the tubing. As you set in traffic, the hoses heat up creating more trouble once you get moving. Pull air from the cowl vent or firewall, its the shortest path to the carb. If you get air from the front, insulate the tubing best you can. Also, don't pull air from under the bumper, its dirty and hot.
Tell that to the olds guys with "W" 442 cars in 1968 I saw these on a car at the strip and that is why I bought the JC whitney kit it was just like this but the under bumper scoops were black plastic. I tried this way and found the 0.20 reduction and decided it was enough of a reduction to move up a class and then took it out and installed the factory on the hood stock "ram air" system and got the exact same 0.20 reduction. So the two systems under the front bumper and through the hood had the exact same result. Added the under the bumper system from kenny bell on a OT 5.0 mustang again 15 years later and got the exact same reduction 0.20.
Almost forgot a warning everybody forgot. A working cold air system WILL make your fuel air ratio LEANER. the problem you need to solve is it too lean for your engine. I would take it easy on it the first time out listening closely for pinging then after one hard run check the condition of your plugs for any sign of leanness. I have found on a large CID engine (428) that was running perfectly by ET using a large holley 4 barrel that a one step on primary jets and two steps larger on the secondaries worked out correct with the same type of weather conditions. If you are running for the highest HP you could also be able to get away with 2-3 degrees more ignition timing because of the colder intake charge. But this is something you need to watch on your particular combination of engine, carb, and timing.
The Jalopy Journal
