No, it doesn't... that's the nice thing about laws of thermodynamics. They don't depend.

In one scenario you've got an engine sucking from an endless supply of hot air in the engine bay.

In the other scenario you've got an engine sucking from an endless supply of cool air above the shield. The heat source is located below the heat shield. First, energy needs to transfer by convection from the air to the sheet metal. Not a terribly quick or efficient process. Then the heat needs to transfer through the sheet metal and it does that okay. And then the energy needs to transfer again from the sheet metal to air by convection. And the air bulk is moving by at more than 750 cfm (in other words, there's a whole lot of air to heat is short amount of time). That thin little piece of sheet metal doesn't have a rats chance in hell of heating the engine's air charge.

The heat soak when parked is insignificant too. The thin sheet doesn't have much stored energy to give up, so the surface temp goes down real quick once the engine establishes air flow again. It's the same reason you can reach into a 400°F oven and grab aluminum foil with your bare hands.

 

I prefer cowl induction for it's simplicity but it lacks the element of a ram air system. Namely, ram air.
Good luck to the old drag racing OP.

 

Since you're a 27 year veteran drag racer, maybe you can post some time slips showing that your Home Depot ram air was worth the trouble.

 

man that keyboard likes to rev.
Ace hardware for the record!
You want timeslips when my track is closed for the winter? That is the reason i am
doing this mod now so i can test in the spring

 

Right, so then you are saying, you don't have any evidence that your design and execution will work, in reality. Got it.

 

see post #18 for evidence. It worked for others in the past so it will work for me too. You are entitled to your opinion howeverI got the log book of 10second passes and trying for high 9s
I took over 200# out of my race car this off season. What do you got? Thought so...

 

I've got six cars that don't look like a homeless encampment when I open the hood.

The concept is fine. Your execution looks sketchy as hell. The burden of proof falls on you. Prove that your version of ram air actually works, until then you're just guessing.

 

cowl induction places the air intake at a high pressure zone - the one at the base of the windshield. not as high as frontal placement, but still a good one

 

again with the childish insults.. I could care less about your opinion on aesthetics. Burden of proof. Wtf ? Lol! now this is para legal website.

Ive got “0” to prove to you kiddo or anyone else only to myself. If you dont like my methods thats fine. you don’t have to be an a$$whole.

 

You're killing me man. You invited me to run my keyboard, remember?

You claim your ram air design will work, and your 'evidence' that it will work, is someone else's different design reportedly worked for them. That's an assumption, not evidence, which is entirely my point. You have yet to test your theory.

You don't need to prove anything, but it'd go a long ways towards your credibility to change the way you react to criticism.

That's a two way street champ. You went there, I just played along.

 

Unsubscribed.

 

Sorry, but don't we owe it to the community to say something when someone is posting bad ideas? Before a novice, that doesn't know any better, comes along and copies someone's flawed design? I try to keep my mouth shut if I don't have anything nice to say, but at a certain point that's doing the community a disservice.

 

Although unsubscribed, I did find this in the new posts section.
I'm compelled to reply.
Sure, I suppose we need a guardian of the internet but in all reality, why can't a guy post up on his work in progress? Flawed or otherwise any interested party can make up their own mind. And we'd hope that before jumping in head first, they would wait for results.
It doesn't need to become a pissing match. It really detracts from any measure of respectability that 3rd gen has garnered over the years.
There's little doubt that the two of you have been solid contributors in the past. Who can deny that someone who owns several 3rd gens hasn't got information to share? Or someone that's been racing 27 years? Both impressive in my books.
Don't ruin it. Otherwise we'll end up like some of the other forums. The atmosphere at those sites is downright poisonous. Who needs that?
Anyway,that's all I've got to say about that.
So much for being unsubscribed!

 

Nope.

 

I guess I come from the school of thought that you don't let friends walk themselves into a trap without giving them a heads up. I suppose I'll have to work on that, to avoid situations like this in the future.

 

I guess I view this more as entertainment and not a crisis.

 

I guess Hot Rod Magazine, the OEMs, and these racers had the same bad ideas.

OR this is proof that there is always more than one solution to a problem.

I have tried to take what has worked well for stock car racing and drag car racing and merge them to suit my needs.
I have spent a lot of time observe enough purpose built machines and notice:

Stock cars can't have huge hood scoops so they pull air from the lower part of the windshield with a cold air box.
Drag cars can have large forward facing or cowl hoods and sometimes they have both.
The pro-stock drag cars always used an air pan/heatshield to keep the hood scoop intake air contained and directed to the carb(s) (a giant air box)

I am trying to accomplish the same thing: 1 large cowl hood with air pan / heat shield supplemented by some forward facing air induction.
I can get a stock flat hood and cut a hole in it for the carb & air filter, some guys do that too.

This is the "drag racing" page I would expect drag racers to understand since we tend to tinker on our own cars.

 

I don't know man, I haven't thought about it as long as you have, but it just seems like you have to close off one end or the other to make it work right (ram air, or cowl induction). If you try to do both it just seems to be more like a big bole through the hood where air goes in the front and out over the windshield without benefit.

 

Oh it's entertaining. No doubt about that. But for some guy who's working on a budget and copies something they saw on the forum, and the 4" drain pipe they ran across the top of the air dam causes an overheating problem, they might feel a bit differently.

No one is saying not to share your ideas. I'm just saying don't insist that something works when you haven't tested it yet Don't get belligerent when people try to save you from yourself. Posting anything on the forum, you need to have thick skin and be prepared for the discussion that follows. This isn't peewee soccer with participation trophies for all. Hack job mod threads don't do much for the respectability of the forum either.

You really don't see any difference between all of those photos and the system you've mocked up so far? Really?

 

They are all different yet accomplish the same goal, this is what I see and all that matters. I am sure if I searched some more I would find intake tubes too.

The last photo is my idea for my air pan/heat shield,the air filter is removed but I can see the carb stud so assume he removed the air filter to show off his hack job mod..
I love the foam blocks too, I use those to seal thru wall air conditioners. sleeves. They sell that next to the drainage pipe and pipe insulation at Ace Hardware.

I have an air pan mocked up with cardboard and tape which is simply my visualizing tool to help shape my sheet metal.
I am happy with my intake tube layouts, they are short runs to the core supports. If I had a bunch of extra cash I would go buy some Aeroduct "CAT" flexible ducting, but drainage pipe will do for now.

total investment with $50 added cost of aluminum sheet metal.... $75. I spend more taking the family out to dinner...

have fun and make something. I for sure do & it beats sitting on the couch.

time to finish this up and be ready for the race season... if it fails or succeeds you will hear about it I promise.

 

Well, so I missed the beginning of this, and I am guessing that I missed some wonderful pictures, but working ram air/cold air intake is fairly simple, and most people and even some commercial setups screw it up. There are 2 things that make power and pretty much everything else is a mistake:

1. The coolest air possible being taken into the intake. To start with this means air from outside the engine bay and away from the radiator. In a lot of applications, this means air from up above the road surface also. This air path also needs to be sealed and preferably done in a way that will not heat up whatever tubing/ducting you are using
2. You are looking for a dense, SLOW-moving air charge for the engine to draw from. Yes, the opening needs to be in a high-pressure area to force air into the opening (rather than create a vacuum at it), but then at the very least it needs to have some way of straightening the flow of air in the ducting (if you look at the SLP intake for TPI third gens you'll see that they had sheet metal wings riveted to the inside of the ducts to straighten and direct airflow in them). Even better than that is to have that high-pressure intake feeding into a larger chamber that lets the air slow down and stabilize in which the engine draws from. Without one or the other you end up with turbulent air being forced into the intake which makes tuning impossible, and the errors that the turbulence causes in the tune will change with rpm, transients...

On 3rd and 4th gen f-bodies the easy solution is to run the intake to the fender/battery box area where you have dense, cool slow-moving air that got in the front of the car in front of the radiator and packed into the fenders.

There are a couple of pics linked here that are some variation of the early 60's style ford drag setup where you had a big airbox on top of the carb(s) and 2 big air ducts going to the headlight area. This mostly works in a drag car and it meets all the requirements under some conditions, but on the street, road course or even on some windy days the 2 big ducts can end up causing a problem- one becomes an intake and one an exhaust and then instead of a pocket of dense air above the carb, you end up with a fast-moving, low-pressure air stream over the top of the carb killing power and messing up tuning.

The solution- assuming the ducting/intake is big enough just get rid of one of the ducts.

The ridiculousness with something like this feeding an open-element air cleaner or sticking a K&N lid on top of the air cleaner housing with ram air ducts going to the housing is, well, just stupid. you mess up both basic things you're trying to achieve.

The other thing that there have been a few pictures of is various air pan setups that I'm assuming mate up to a hood with a scoop in it. This can be good or bad, 1- it has to seal fairly well, and 2- a lot of these end up being massive pieces of aluminum draped over the top of a hot engine, aluminum absorbs and transfers heat well, and in most situations that will cost you a little bit of power (these are typically used in road racing applications where the air is always moving so it keeps the pan cool, but it's still adding a few degrees of heat to the airflow that you don't need to).

 

I'm all for modifications on a budget, but it just looks bad to see french drain pipes under the hood of any car imo. I have to agree with Drew, you post a pic like this you are gonna get opinions. All the pics from Hot Rod look functional and tasteful. No matter what it is you are building or what the budget is at least make it look like you took pride in your accomplishments.

 

The air pan / heat shield finished and sealed to the cowl hood. I am pleased with the outcome.

btw running just the open air filter with the cowl hood and no air pan the car ran 10.30s off the trailer last fall... in the heat of summer it run 10.50s all day.

The air pan will be much better than letting the cowl intake air blend with the hot under hood air and hoping some of that cool air gets to the carb. I should have done this years ago but life had other priorities at the time.
The air inlet tubes will channel some more cool air to the carb. Hate them if you must but 4" aeroduct cost $10/ft, if these tubes work then I will fork over the dough for nicer material.
Removing the air filter has always slowed the car down, so it must help smooth out the air flow to the carb.

Now I have a proper cowl air intake system supplemented with some air from the core support. I am looking forward to testing this spring.

 

Since you also performed some weight reduction, I’d be interested in seeing a comparison of the car with last season’s setup compared to the ram air system to get a direct correlation of the gains from the ram air and cowl seal by itself. Good luck with it.

 

The last bit of metal work to finish this off; some baffles to channel airflow to the intake tubes. simple enough and a little bit of panel weld to hold then in place.

 

I removed 204 lbs so that will be worth around 2 tenths (rule of thumb is 1 tenth per 100 lbs).

Any gains past 2 tenths I will attribute to the improved outside air intake system.

I can leave the headlight doors closed and test without the inlet tubes to see if there is a difference.

The air pan is part of the aif filter base so that is not going to be removed, I should have done this air pan many years ago.

The other mod I did this winter is I installed double adjustable rear coil overs. I have them baselined to mimic my old 50/50 lakewood shocks., but now I have some tunabliity on the rear suspension to help improve the 60' times. but again a lighter car intaking outside air should leave the line quicker too.

 

So what was the outcome here?

 

 

BEST ET to date

 

It looks like you dropped 1/10th?

 

Yes, every improvement counts.
The past few years have been a time for change and personal growth.
Glad I kept the car in storage and looking forward to picking up where I left off.
I will get some maintenance done over the winter and be ready for next season.

 

:thumbs:

I wish we still had a track to run at. Enjoy your car, and working on whittling down that ET.

 

Thanks, I think with a bit more RPM on the transbrake and adjusting the tire pressure/rear coil-overs that 9 sec run is there.

But nice to see a 1/10 improvement with some weight reduction and the air pan.