I have a semi built 355 heads cam headers... all that and my under hood temps get pretty high. i have an open element air filter and durring the day when its 85+ my car starts to run above 220. at night it never goes higher than maybe 190. I had a similar problem on a grandam i used to own. turned out it was the open filter i put in. it was right behind the radiator fan and every time it kicked on my car would heat up. anyone else runing an open elemnt that had this problem? i put my hand infront of the filter and with the fan running it was blowing right there. just trying to see if this is something i should look into or if i should look somewhere else first.

 

no connection man. That doesnt make any sense. Air filter has nothing to do with cooling. The only thing it might do is cause a lean mixture, which would cause your car to run cooler.

 

sorry but i gotta disagree... hotter intake air=higher temps in the combustion chamber... thats what the thermac device on stock intakes do route hot air from the exhaust manifolds directly into the intake to warm the engine up quicker.
i didnt belive it at first eighther but it was the reason my grand am over heated. i changed the intake back and forth several times to confirm it and every time i had an open element filter sucking in the hot air comming from the radiator fan it hit redline.
What made me think about this is a lot of ppl on the board complain about cooling issues in the summer. reading some of the posts most of them have semi moddified engines some more so than others but what they all had in common was they all ran an open aircleaner.
I have a 3" cowl hood on mine so im going to try to make a carb plate that will seal the intake so nothing but outside air is getting in. a better test would be just to put on the old aircleaner and duct but i threw those out. ill see if anyone around me has one i can borow.

 

Also found this
http://www.radiatorinfo.com/radtip.html
Overheated incoming air - On older vehicles with a carburetor or throttle body injection, check the operation of the heated air intake system on the air cleaner. If the temperature control valve is stuck so only heated air from around the exhaust manifold is drawn into the air cleaner, it may contribute to detonation and/or overheating

 

Well if you already know the answer, and have plenty of research to back it up, whyd you ask?

My point is, hot air going into the intake shouldnt affect the temperature so much that youd hurt your car, or even notice.

When you boil water for instance, it doesnt matter if you start with hot water, or cold water, it gonna reach the same temperture.

Also what you said has no merit, because you justify swapping intakes as controlled circumstances. Youd have to take into account driving habits, speed of the vehicle, etc etc etc.....

Simply replacing the lid of an aircleaner wont do what youre stating. By the way, are you running a TBI system? When you throw electronics into the equation, its a whole new ball game. But a carb wont do what youre describing. Your digging in the wrong place for the problem.

P.S.
I read that link, every word, theres nothing in there even remotely related to what youre talking about. It just talks about how a poor radiator will not cool a car, and you dont want the engine to get too hot.

 

I'm running an open element and my car runs right where the thermostat tells it to, even in 90 degree weather. If the cooling system is working for your application, you shouldn't have any problem with an open element... You should flush your cooling system and check the health of your thermostat (maybe just replace it with a 185/195 for the hell of it) and water pump... possibly consider getting a better radiator if you're still having cooling issues.

Changing the air intake system to fix this problem will only band-aid the issue.

 

Lean = hotter so that's a very possible connection.


I don't think that's relevant to this problem unless he's running for short/long periods of time and that affects his problem.

The cool air his intake is sucking up is dense (cramming more oxygen into the same space) then the hot air he's getting. There's a possibility the lean air fuel mixture is causing the car to run warmer.

Here's 20 other reasons:
http://www.enjoythedrive.com/content/?id=10183

 

SOrry youre right, i got that part backwards.

As for my second statement, its perfectly relevant, when the air/fuel enter the chamber, they combust, ie: explode, ie: turn into something very hot. Much hotter than the initial temperature of the air entering. The explosion is combustion due to chemical properties, and a spark being added, not due to the original temperature of the air. Those few degrees of hotter air, will not effect the final temperature of the combusted compounds, which is what he was originally suggesting.

 

Leaner mixtures are caused by more air molecules going into the combustion chamber than usual... rich mixtures are from less air going into the combustion chamber... so it would seem to me that an open element would cause more of a rich mixture than a lean one.