Anyhow, I was wondering (don't laugh) If any one has ever considered "forced" ram air for their vehicle? Reason I'm asking is, I have 2 Axial blowers laying around, and was contemplating using them to force air up my intake louvers... They push 250 CFM each, and are 4" in diameter (12V). I picked them up a year or so ago, and used them to force feed my 3.8 in my Monte. They blew hard enough to blow the air cleaner off the carb. I had them wired to a switch (used to have a bogging prob on dry days) I don't know how, but they made a decent diff in acceleration when they were on??? Anyhow, I was wondering If anybody has tried or considered it...Thanx

 

lots of people have considered stuff like this. I think the most radical idea had something to do with a couple of leaf blower motors. Nobody has actually done this though that I know of. BTW, I would have thought to put this in the power adder section with the turbo and blower ideas.

 

Isn't this akin to those "Supercharge any vehicle" products? THey cost 69.95 in the back of car magazines. Of course this would help acceleration. Think about it this way - natural ram air occurs at higher speeds. I'd say 85+ mph. At this point the ram air is actually creating boost... nowhere near 1lb but positive pressure nonetheless. Thing is, it kicks in too late to really help a V6 in the 1/4 mile. Since your ramair is on from the get go, you'll be reaping the benefits that a natural ramair gives exponentially sooner. I don;t care what anyone says, the people who have installed those ramair boxes thru the foglight cavities say they feel the car pull better at highway speeds. Theres a good amount of these people too! I'll soon be one of them. Do it man, its a good idea.

 

ummmmmmmmmmmm no

in order to have boost, you must first overcome vacuum

i dont see an electric motor that small overcoming vacuum

hot rod magazine did an article on this, and they said to have an electric motor that would produce actual boost, it would be about as big as a SBC

it all relates to physics

also, if it was this easy, why werent we all doing this years ago

 

though i'm in a little deep here, i do have a somewhat ok knowledge of boost and such, and i definatly agree that you have to overcome vacume in order to have boost.

however, if your little electric fans provide a slight push and 'lessen' the vacuum, thats better right?

i'll relate this to real world, you owe some guy five dollars (vacuum) you give him three (tiny electrc fan) you now only owe him 2 (not boost but closer)

although they are not providing positive "boost", they do lessen the vacuum. if you add a small positive number to a big negative number, you do not have a positive number, but you do have less of a negative.

in short 1991tealRSt-topGuy, you are right. the fans will not provide "boost" in the traditional sense. but it will provide "ram air"like benifits, at a slower speed.

one more thing to consider, once you got past a certain speed, the fans would only inhibit airflow, the air would be rushing into your "blown ram air" faster then the fans are pushing . and then they will just be in the way.

i would not put them on my car, but then again i don't drag race.

hope i did not "**** on anyones religion" or **** anybody off. just trying to shine some light.

 

i had this same idea along time ago when i was new to tinkering on cars

i almost tried it, thought about it some more and then physics proved me wrong

 

Ahhh I must sound stupid.

Natural ram air overcomes vaccuum... not much but I remember a post a while ago where several people (including me) agreed that when natural ram air kicks in (assuming it is a good, fucntional setup) it creates around a tenth of a pound of positive pressure. Forgive me for overlooking the fact that the fans will impede airflow when air is being pushed to hard (around the speed that ram air would kick in). Sorry

 

I didn't say anything about boost, I know THAT won't happen lol, As far as inhibiting airflow....I doubt it, they have lots of open space, And I figured Id just remove the water shields... My intake setup is TOTALLY stock, and I just figured it might work??? Heck, I already have the tunnel blowers, I might as well rig it up to see what happens right?

 

Well.. the way it works is this. If they blew the air cleaner off the monte carlo, they made boost. If a backfire blew the air cleaner off the monty (far more likely).. oh well.

Rated at 250 cfm I'd go ahead and hook the pair up just for s&g.. however, thanks to GM's wonderful idea that we sixers don't need hotwire mafs, you'll have to use a suck-through design to get proper afr.. so you'll be looking at a dual-y intake system. Also, make sure the PCV breather isn't connected to the positive-pressure side of the system.

I ran a fan on mine out of boredom just to test to see how the maf would react to increased airflow.. was floored when I kicked the switch and my idle jumped 250-300 rpm (no tach at the time, going by ear on this).. a little difference in acceleration.. a difference in how high the motor wound while revving in neutral (by at least 500 rpm).. which means there was some amount of boost in there. With a pair, who knows. Running them in series or in parallel? our cars require about 250 cfm at redline.. so running them in series to have them try to double up the boost IS feasable. Get a $20 vacuum/pressure tester and 6 feet of vac line from autozone if you try this.. I never got scientific proof of the results on mine =\



If you've got 'em just layin around, what do you have to lose?