Cold air vs Short ram.

[Crusty Crayon]

I have been looking around the site, and getting mixed responses on intakes. I live in western PA, and although it isn't a tropical rain forest, we do have rain and snow. Winter is coming up, and are roads tend to be slushy and wet. I hear a lot about running cold air intakes with hydrolock filters for wet conditions. I went to the AEM website and looked at their FAQs. They said that a CAS is not bothered by too much water unless submerged in water. They also mentioned that in some cars short ram systems are just as good if not better. I wanted to get everyones oppion. I dont know if it is worth the 60 dollars for a bypass or not. Ebay cold air are around $60 plus another $60 for filter, or AEM system for around $150 w/filter. Do I even need the filter? Can I buy a cold air kit that will work as a short ram in the winter and upgrade it in the summers? What is with the short ram cold air intakes? I am so confused.

[ex_style90]

Kasou...-_-. lol Yep this topic has been brought up a number of times. Personally I perfer the CAI with bypass valves. Short Rams are good to me for the cold weather cause they provide more heat to the engine IMO. Ebay has some pretty good prices, thats were I bought my short ram from. Works good. All you have to really do is invest in a good filter. K&N are the best to me, and umm yea im pretty sure you would need an air filter for your intake. , but these old threads should help you answer if not many then some of your questions..

http://cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthread.php?p=1253111

http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=81684

http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=58313

http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthread.php?t=90341

[Camurai]

Run a short ram intake. Unless you're spending a ridiculous amount of money on a race-designed cold air intake design, the difference in horsepower between the typical cold air and short ram intakes is negligible. Pick up an eBay short ram intake and buy a decent filter for it. You should end up spending in the neighborhood of $60-75 total.

[Shadow1]

for the winter id buy a SRI(short ram intake). you wont have to worry about it getting any water or crap in it. theres like a 2-4hp difference between the two. if you want to spend the $150 on a AEM intake, by all means do so. you have a warrentee that if anythign goes wrong you can get your money back or a replacement. not so with most companies on ebay.

if you want just go on ebay and get a SRI for like $30 and then buy a K&M filter and yourll be set. IMO i wouldnt want to go thru the trouble of drilling a hole in the engine bay and relocating my battery just for a cold air intake

[92Inspire]

in my opinion short ram no matter what conditions, if you buy or fab a short ram heat box you get the same effect as cold air intake. it only takes a cup of water to hydrolock a motor. but again its all in your prefrence

[johnl]

Unless you're going to be crossing flooded causeways etc then IMO hydrolocking is a non-issue, you'll never spray enough water into an intake to cause a problem. I have read somewhere that the 'anti-hydrolocking' valves can restrict the intake, and another story about someone who sucked some small part of their A/H valve into their engine (from memory I think it got stuck in the plenum, so could have been worse).

Colder air is proven to make at least a slight increase to power in just about any application. Short rams might make a difference depending on the engine specifics, but when the intake tract is shortened the general affect will tend to be to lift power at higher rpm but lose some at lower rpm. Short rams typically draw air from a hot part of the engine bay, so this will definitely cost something, deducted from whatever you may gain from the ram which itself may be significant but may not be...

[Camurai]

in my opinion short ram no matter what conditions, if you buy or fab a short ram heat box you get the same effect as cold air intake. it only takes a cup of water to hydrolock a motor. but again its all in your prefrence

It takes less than a cup. Water doesn't compress. Even in an engine with an 8.8:1 compression ratio, it's not going to take a whole lot of water to make it too much for the combustion chamber to handle.

John, I'm not sure about the area you live in, but I know that here, it's a fairly common occurrence to get deluges of biblical proportions. In the last 4 years, 3 of those have seen flood conditions around here. Even when those type of rains don't occur, every year we get several storms where you'll unexpectedly hit a pothole and plow into a 6-12" deep puddle of water. Combined with the force of the car moving forward, this could quite easily cause a condition where an engine would suck up more than enough water to cause hydrolock. I don't know about other people, but for my money, 2-4hp in a street driven vehicle isn't worth the risk.

[Crusty Crayon]

[QUOTE=ex_style90]..umm yea im pretty sure you would need an air filter for your intake. , but these old threads should help you answer if not many then some of your questions..



Oh yeah, i was talking about the bypass valve, sorry.

[Aeromech]

I got my longtube intake for like $35 shipped off of ebay.

This year we got ALOT of rain here and I drove thru high enough water to dip the filter in the water, but everything is good....

You are talking about water over the door sills....you will not hydrolock your motor unless the complete filter is submerged long enough to suck 100% water thru about 3.5 feet of 3" diameter tubing....it's highly unlikely.

The only way I can see it is if you get stuck in the water...then you are screwed anyways and should have never gotten yourself into that situation...lol

[Crusty Crayon]

The short ram seems good enough, and the idea of the custom box might be good. Do most of the cold airs on ebay require you to go thru the engine bay? I thought they went down under the engine. Oh well, I'll go with a Short air. the 4 hp isnt worth it if it chould ruin the engine. Thanks for the help guys (possible girls, guys is a western PA term for everyone............. anyway) I'm off to shop the net.

[C91BLX7]

IN CAI the filter is behind the bumper so its pretty safe

[Camurai]

Taken from www.sportcompactcarweb.com in an article they did about the AEM Bypass Valve:

"Water is dangerous for one simple reason. It isn't compressible. An engine works simply as an air pump, drawing air in, compressing it, burning some fuel, and pumping it out. And it does so with a vengance. With the throttle closed and the engine idling, the cylinders are trying so hard to fill themselves with air that they pump the manifold down to a vacuum of over 20 inches of mercury. What's that mean? Quite simply, vacuum is measured in terms of how far up a tube that vacuum would suck a liquid. Mercury is an extremely dense liquid, so sucking it 20 inches up a tube takes a very strong vacuum. If you replace that mercury with water, that same vacuum would draw water over 22 feet straight up! What that means is, no matter how long your intake pipe is, if you stick the end of it under water, that water will get sucked into your engine.

OK, so what's the big deal? Think about what happens next. Say you have a 2.0-liter engine, so each cylinder displaces 500cc. If just one of those cylinders sucked in just 100cc of water (100cc is only 5 percent of what's in a 2-liter bottle, if you are having problems thinking metrically) the end would be very, very near.If this engine has 10.0:1 compression, for example, the combustion chamber would be reduced to just 55.5cc when the piston is at top dead center. As the piston goes up the compression stroke with 100cc of water in the cylinder, impending doom is near. Air will happily compress as the piston moves up, but water will not. As soon as the combustion chamber is reduced to 100cc, the piston will stop. No matter what. And then the engine will stop... if you are lucky.

Sometimes, if the engine is simply idling, the flywheel is relatively light, and the connecting rods, pistons, block, head, and head gasket are very strong, the engine will simply stop dead and can be revived by removing all the spark plugs and pumping out the water. Usually, however, the rotating assembly will have too much inertia and when the water tries to stop the piston, all hell breaks loose. Either the connecting rod buckles, or the piston breaks, or the cylinder wall cracks, or the head gasket blows, or the cylinder head gets lifted off the block, or any combination of catastrophic failures will occur. The only thing guaranteed is that the water will not compress."

Now think about that for a second. The manifold gets pumped down to 20" of mercury. Even being behind the bumper, hit a big puddle and water will slosh around and some will hit the filter. It will then get sucked into the intake pipe.

Water is dangerous with a CIA. 'Nuff said.

[cb7addict]

I would just be safe and buy a short ram... with cai you would have to cut too

[C91BLX7]

Water is dangerous with a CIA. 'Nuff said.

Whats the CIA got to do with this

[Camurai]

Whats the CIA got to do with this

How high off the ground is a filter on the end of a CAI? Compare that to the height off the ground that a typical short ram filter sits. If you hit a good sized puddle with a CAI and you are moving at any kind of decent speed, you're inviting disaster. With a short ram intake, you have somewhat more of a buffer zone. It's simple physics.