My friend was talking about how putting a bag full of dry ice onto the intake of a car will help it dramatically. I know all about how colder air is more dense and such but will it really give that big of a difference? The meijers by my house sells dry ice and I was thinking about going out and buying some once I get my car put back together and started. I just want to know if I would be wasting my money.

 

no you wouldn't be wasting your money if you looking to reduce ET

 

Regular ice bagging down the intake is a pretty common drag racers' trick. Buy a $1 bag of ice, lay it on the intake between runs, then stage the car and get in a run while the intake's still cool.

The LT1 intake is perfect for this, all aluminum. TPI is pretty receptive to this trick also.

 

alright sweet, too bad i have a big fat carb sitting in the middle of the intake, ill probably buy two bags, one ill slap on top of the air filter assembly and then split the other bag into two zip locks and throw one on each side of the intake.

either that or ill just throw one bag on one side and the other on the other side

 

Probably be better off simply running your fuel line through a "cold can". Then you can put dry ice or regular ice in it to get your fuel temp way down low.

The bag of ice on the plenum works better for the EFI crowd, that the intake is an air mover only.

 

with a carb though running the fuel through a cold can wouldn't it heat up again fairly quick when sitting in the fuel bowls?

also I don't think cooling the fuel is going to make as much difference as the intake itself

 

If you have a carb and the motor pulls good vacuum then itll be self cooling when your idling if you have an airgap style manifold. My tbi gets ice cold when the engine is idling. At the low pressures in the manifold the gas flashes over to a vapor and works just like A/C refrigerant.

 

Yeah, when I had TBI my fuel would literally cause ice to form on the throttle blades even in warm temperatures. It does cool very nicely like that.

 

How often do people put dry ice on fuel lines? I would think it would get a little chilly, and possibly freeze the fuel. At what temp does Unleaded freeze? Im sure its good till atleast 30*F below, but dry ice is just a little colder than that. I would try the Ice trick on the intake, with the seprate bags, and look at making a fuel cooler, possibly an oil cooler inside of a box with and Ice and Salt combo? Or a vented Dry Ice set up.

 

It takes alot to freeze fuel... the weather can get down to -60*C where I live and I've never had a frozen fuel problem.

The cold-can for the fuel lines is kinda over rated though... it really won't give you any noticeable improvement in performance.

Most guys only do the cool can because of the 'cool factor' (I'm sorry, lol... that was bad ).... it doesn't really do much, because fuel moves through it so fast that it doesn't stay in there long enough to cool off.

 

you wouldn't really want to put the oil through ice.
if anything that would hurt performance being that it would thicken the oil up and well now more pumping loss. oil gives the least friction when warmest


cool cans I don't think would do a whole lot
if anything cooler intake would be best

one thing I would be curious of though is putting a chunk of dry ice in the air filter housing. but then I can see a problem with co2 doesn't really burn and so your wasting some volume but would you possibly make up for the lost volume taking up by co2 with extra air being that the air should be fairly dense? that I don't know

 

Regular ice will work better. When dry ice melts, it skips the liquid phase and goes right to gas, no longer able to cool the intake. When regular ice melts, it turns to liquid and is able to continue absorbing heat.

 

that might be with the regular ice going to water and then going to gas

but all in all I would say dry ice would still be a better choice

dry ice starts off much cooler and is able to absorb more heat in a shorter amount of time while regular ice wouldn't absorb the heat near as quick

 

Cool cans do work, so long as you have the coil size figured out properly for the amount of fuel that you will be using, though you want to use it in conjunction with the icing down (which also works- regular or dry ice) rather than let the fuel do the cooling as you then reach for the middle ground rather than both being cooled appropriately.

 

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Thanks RedDevil, You also know about the cool can thing. Years ago, it always worked for us. Anytime you can cool the fuel, or air,(with EFI), performance is to be expected.