So after watching this video it seems like grabbing the cowl air induction system from an 82 - 84 trans am and slapping it in my 89 formula would be a really easy process. It looks like all you would need is the actual system that attaches to the hood and a specific air cleaner for that system to attach to on the bottom. The problem is I cant find an 82 - 84 air cleaner and finding the HO cowl induction system itself isn't easy either. I was wondering if this swap really is as easy as it looks and if maybe there's somewhere that I don't know about that would have these pieces. Any knowledge about this would be appreciated as I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to these things.

 

It's been done many times, not sure about a massive power increase. I think there are a few threads on here about it. May have to google search to find them.

 

When I first bought my car it had the functional cowl induction deal on it. I took it off and sold it to a member so he could get back to original. because I didn't like the look of the air cleaner and replaced it with an open air cleaner. I do have a sllotted open cowl. I would dare to say It diidnt make one bit of difference. Definitely was no power decrease.

 

Swap is easy. The lid, mech on the hood and the screen at the opening is all you 'need'. I can't say I noticed any difference. It did pull in air though, leaves or helicopter seeds would occasionally get sucked to the screen. I have a couple that are 'ok but far from perfect' condition in the garage lounging around.

 

The lid has been the hard to find part for me. There's a couple of the mechanisms on eBay but nothing for the lid.

 

Here is the thread from a member that recently did this: https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tech...-cold-air.html

 

I saw this video the other day on YouTube and LMAO. It was like those VTEC memes where it shows the driver being crushed in their seat when the VTEC engages and the passenger is just sitting there like nothing is happening. Getting cold, dense air to your engine is a great thing/mod to do ... but it is not a "power adder". Ducting cold air to your motor will never give you the kind of performance improvements that you will get from stuff like cams, heads, exhaust, intakes, etc. but all of those parts will be more productive if your motor is breathing cool, dense air. I still shudder when someone with a third gen pops their hood and I see some open element cone filter or a triangle filter or a cone TPI filter ... just sucking in hot underhood air (and these engines produce no small amount of underhood heat).

I just wanted to throw that out for all the new people here who might look at that video and think that if they do this mod that they're going to shave a full second off their zero to 60 or quarter mile just by getting some fresh air to their carb / TBI.

FYI.

This mod will not give you massive power ... sorry, it just makes it easier for your LG4 or L03 to breathe and that breath comes from a high-density boundary layer at the base of the windshield.

Will you make more horsepower?

Yes.

How much?

Not enough to tell the difference by even the all too popular seat of your pants dyno. You may get up to 5% more power on a stock engine (with a really good cold air design) but I think that's pushing it and hoping for the best, all things considered. All engines are basically air pumps and the LG4 and L03 are both strangled to death from the factory in regards to the amount of air that these two engines can both take in and push out so even if you're getting more air to the engine, there's still the factory design limits of what the LG4 and L03 can use / move. Plumbing your engine for cold air / ram air is a good mod, and everyone with a LG4 or L03 should do this ... if they have this factory hood (or if you retrofit one to your base Firebird), but there are better, cheaper and easier ways to get cold air to your LG4 / L03 motor using the factory power bulge hood and those ways will really get some cold air to your motor.

The factory stuff, like the engines, is itself choked by design. Just look at how tiny the inlet is that mates to the top of the air cleaner assembly, let alone the hole in the air cleaner assembly itself ...

FWIW, I did this mod to my '90 Formula L03 / A4 in '99, because I didn't have the factory activator switch, the solenoid was activated with a simple illuminated rocker switch on the dash. Giving power to the scoop guts gave a satisfying "ka-thunk" when the scoop slammed open and shut and the engine was louder because the only baffle between the TBI and the open back of the scoop was the air filter itself.

Did it help my engine breathe? Yes, because it both gave the L03 a cold dose of fresh air and it basically doubled the intake capacity of my engine (including the factory snorkel air cleaner which was still used when the scoop was open.

Did it give me massive increases in power?

No.

Like I said, maybe 5% power increase on a stock engine and on these engines, anything is better than nothing but again these two engines are choked to death so in order to truly benefit from more or colder air, you've got to free up the restrictions on air coming in and air going out and that's a whole different topic. IIRC, I also ran a custom dual snorkel air cleaner with my factory power bulge operational hood on my '90 Formula L03 but that was so long ago, and so many other 3rdGen F-bodies ago that I can't be sure. My point at the time was to get as much cold, fresh, dense air to my TBI assembly that I could and to make it look OEM or near enough.

For those of you who are wringing your hands because you can't find the now super rare factory cold air parts, there was an article posted on here about doing this mod with just the factory hood and none of the factory parts, complete DIY scratch-build stuff. You have to go back about 9 years but here's the link.

DIY cold air induction using factory power bulge hood

Look for the post by SGTMAC.

I also thought about doing this DIY mod in "reverse", that is, putting some kind of NACA duct on the front of the power bulge where it was more of a ram air type hood, the faster you went, the more cold, dense air you would cram into your 4bbl or TBI setup. I never did it because I didn't have a spare hood to cut upon but that's out there for anyone who wants to do it. Just do the DIY stuff but instead of breathing from the rear, drop a NACA type duct onto the front rise of the power bulge and have at it.

Interesting thread, brings back a lot of memories from a life long ago. Thanks for the thread and the pics! Good luck with your mods!

 

Nice article, thanks.
Overall they picked up 38HP @ 4000 rpm (Edelbrock 3701 Performer intake, Edelbrock TES headers and Y-pipe, TPI catalytic converter and cat-back exhaust system, and home-made cold air package). The CAI alone was worth 18 horsepower with increases of .31 sec (0-60 mph), and .31 sec and 1.3 mph in the 1/4 mile. So yeah, these engines were significantly choked off from the factory.