Calling all Vendors with CAI's - PROVE Your CAI Gains! READ

[BRITCAM5]

This is great! I am new to this site and bought a new Camaro 2SS/RS L99. It's great to know that there are people willing to help fellow owners with good sound advice about these products before we sink our hard earned dollars into it. Thanks again JANNETTYRACING for doing the test as I would not have clue otherwise!Lol. Looking forward to the results.

I know this is off topic but I am looking into a Corsa cat back exhaust system and was just seeking your opinion on this! Simply do you think this a good choice or not? Sorry to the other members for asking but this my first ever post and Iam new to this kinda thing!Lol

[DrumDawg]

I wish they would have also tested a k&n filter installed in the factory stock airbox.

[wrek]

Yeah, when someone claims Ram Air gains, I move on to the next vendor.

[klatterblast]

Originally Posted by DrumDawg

I wish they would have also tested a k&n filter installed in the factory stock airbox.

they did test k&n flat panel in the stock airbox NO gains in hp or tq, its just a better filter thats reusable.

[JANNETTYRACING]

Originally Posted by BRITCAM5

This is great! I am new to this site and bought a new Camaro 2SS/RS L99. It's great to know that there are people willing to help fellow owners with good sound advice about these products before we sink our hard earned dollars into it. Thanks again JANNETTYRACING for doing the test as I would not have clue otherwise!Lol. Looking forward to the results.

I know this is off topic but I am looking into a Corsa cat back exhaust system and was just seeking your opinion on this! Simply do you think this a good choice or not? Sorry to the other members for asking but this my first ever post and Iam new to this kinda thing!Lol

Love the Corsa Products, TOP SHELF!
I stock them give me a call and I will hook you up.

Ted.

[ledfut]

Ted, I missed this thread completely. I would have loved to come down and check this out. I'm eagerly anticipating the results!!!

Love the work you do, I referred a friend of mine to you a few years back with his C5 on an insane amount of juice.

I'll be coming by when the weather gets warm to have some work done.

[JANNETTYRACING]

Originally Posted by ledfut

Ted, I missed this thread completely. I would have loved to come down and check this out. I'm eagerly anticipating the results!!!

Love the work you do, I referred a friend of mine to you a few years back with his C5 on an insane amount of juice.

I'll be coming by when the weather gets warm to have some work done.

Thank you for the Referal, that turned out to be a big job, the motor was hurt when it came in here.

I look forward to working with you, If it is any consulation I need the work during the Winter months, all cars are stored inside.

Ted.

[Halltech]

Originally Posted by JANNETTYRACING

Totally Not True for any Kit, RAM AIR IS A MYTH!!!!!!!!!!!!

We do NOT have a ram air kit, but I beg to differ with you. I have over 48 years experience designing, and building engines, in particular, ram air boxes for Pro Stock drag racing as a crew member of a motorcycle drag racing team. I engineered a 6 cylinder 1550 cc motor from 1046cc, turbocharged it and ran high 8 second passes at 160 mph the first time at the track. I have over 8 years tuning the LS series Corvettes, GTOs and now the Camaro LS3.

Back in the 70s, our first attempt at running ram air in our carbureted motors resulted in the motors shutting down at around 100 mph, which was due to the fact that the ram air induction was creating some boost at the venturi of the carburetors. We had gravity fed float bowls, so when the venturi lost its vacuum signal at the main jet, fuel was no longer being drawn from the float bowls. The fix was to run lines from the float bowls to the ram air port, which equalized the pressure at the venturi. The result: We gained 4 to 5 mph terminal speed on our Suzuki Pro Stock bike. All Pro Stock 500 cid motors take advantage of ram air with ram air stacks that block the sun from view in the drivers seat. You do not see the ram air stack pointed to the rear.

Here is an article from Sport Rider that shows detailed testing on the bikes that sport ram air. There are many more out there.

http://www.sportrider.com/tech/146_9912_ram/index.html

Now having said this, no ram air system on the market for the Camaro, that I have seen, creates manifold pressure due to the design, and in particular, when you consider the super restrictive filter in the path of the airflow and pressure. Absolute manifold pressure beyond ambient is possible under the right conditions at around 90 mph. The airbox design, sealing, and flow characteristics determine at what speed minor boost can occur. Don't count on much though.

In that respect I agree with your assessment.

Jim Hall

[soonerfanru2]

Originally Posted by JANNETTYRACING

Totally Not True for any Kit, RAM AIR IS A MYTH!!!!!!!!!!!!

You said ram air is a myth but in the test you did I think you had a fan blowing air 60 miles per hour If getting more air does not help why did you do it in the test? Just wondering it does not make sence to me.

[SGOS252382]

Originally Posted by soonerfanru2

You said ram air is a myth but in the test you did I think you had a fan blowing air 60 miles per hour If getting more air does not help why did you do it in the test? Just wondering it does not make sence to me.

I believe its because some of the intakes were designed to work best while the car is moving.
So having a 60mph fan simulates a moving car.

Otherwise some people would have said that certian intakes would have made more HP if the car was moving.

So he wanted to make the test as fair as possible for all intake designs.

Also helps keep the car cooler.

[BackinBlackSS/RS]

Originally Posted by soonerfanru2

You said ram air is a myth but in the test you did I think you had a fan blowing air 60 miles per hour If getting more air does not help why did you do it in the test? Just wondering it does not make sence to me.

That has nothing to do with ram air. When you drive your car do you not have wind? Ram air IS a myth.

[2SSRS@Gen5diy]

That is what you believe not a fact, it works.

[BLACK10]

sorry, im with Gale Banks on this one, he thinks it works

http://bankspower.com/products/show/

had in on my dmax

[Mod4SS]

Originally Posted by JANNETTYRACING

Marketers just can't resist it. Ram air! The words themselves summon up images of rushing wild beasts, or of secret military aircraft operating on futuristic principles.

Unfortunately, on most perofrmance cars, ram-air is as functional as tail fins were on cars of the ’60s.

What is it? Ram air just means using a forward-facing air intake to gain some extra intake pressure. We have all, as children, felt the pressure of moving air on our hands when we held them out the window of the family car. When moving air is brought smoothly to rest, the energy of its motion is converted into pressure. Motorcycles went through a "ram-air" period in the early 1990s, during which street bikes were equipped with the forward-facing "rocket-launcher" engine air intakes seen on many road-racing machines.

While it's appealing to imagine the forward velocity of a car being converted into free supercharge, the actual air pressure gain is extremely small at normal speeds. For example, at 150 mph, the pressure gain when air is efficiently brought to rest is 2.75 percent. Because this is a dynamic effect, it is proportional to the square of the air velocity. At a more realizable automobile speed of 75 mph, the effect (again with 100 percent efficient conversion of velocity into pressure) will be only one-quarter as great — that is, just under seven-tenths of one percent.

In fact, velocity energy is not converted into pressure at 100 percent efficiency. A figure of 75 percent efficiency is usual, which reduces our notional ram-air gain at 75 mph to one-half of one percent.

Therefore, at normal speeds, ram air is a myth. However, something much more interesting lies behind it, ignored by the advertiser's busy pen. That something is airbox resonance.

In order to implement ram air, the carburetors or throttle-bodies of our engine must seal to an airbox whose volume is large enough that the intake cycle of one cylinder cannot pull its internal pressure down significantly. Box volume is typically 10-20 times the engine's displacement. Then the forward-facing air intake is connected to the box. When this assembly is tested on the dyno — even without an external fan to simulate the high-speed rush of air past the intake — it is discovered that the engine's torque curve is greatly altered, with new peaks and hollows.

Why? The answer is airbox resonance. If you hold the mouth of an empty bottle near your open mouth as you loudly hum scales, you find that at certain “hum frequencies” the bottle reinforces your humming, which becomes louder. What is happening is that the springy compressibility of the air in the bottle is bouncing the slug of air in the bottle's neck back and forth at a particular frequency — higher if the bottle is small, lower if it is larger. Your humming is driving a rapid plus-and-minus variation of the air pressure inside the bottle.

The same thing happens inside a resonant airbox. The volume of air in the box is the “spring” in this kind of oscillator. The mass of air in the box's intake pipe is what oscillates. The “humming” that drives the oscillation is the rapid succession of suction pulses at the carb or throttle-body intakes. If the volume of the airbox and the dimensions of the intake pipe(s) are correctly chosen, the airbox can be made to resonate very strongly, in step with the engine's suction pulses. The result, when this is done correctly, is that the engine takes air from the box only during the high-pressure part of its cycle, while the box refills from atmosphere through its intake between engine suction pulses. This produces a useful gain in torque.

Using this idea, motorcycle engines have been able to realize torque increases, in particular speed ranges, of 10-15 percent. In race engines, it is usual to tune the airbox to resonate at peak-power rpm to increase top speed. For production engines, it is often more useful to tune the box resonance to fill in what would otherwise be a flat-spot in the torque curve, resulting in smoother power and improved acceleration.

Early resonant airbox systems used long intake pipes that terminated in forward-facing intakes. More recent designs do not connect the ram-air pipe to the box at all, but terminate it near the airbox entry. The actual entry pipe is a short piece of tubing with bellmouths on both ends. This is done because (a) the potential gain from actual ram air is too small to worry about, and (b) it's easier to tune the airbox with a short tube.

Where vehicle speeds are very high, gains from ram air are significant. This was discovered by Rolls-Royce in the late 1920s as the company developed its R Schneider Trophy air racing engine. At speeds above 300 mph, it was noticed that the R’s fuel mixture leaned out enough to cause backfiring. When the mixture was corrected for ram-air pressure gain, the engineers realized they had a "free" source of power. At 350 mph the gain from ram air is almost 15 percent. Similar mixture correction is necessary when ram air is used on drag-race and Bonneville cars and bikes.

Intuition suggests that a forward-facing intake made in the form of a funnel, large end foremost, should somehow multiply the pressure of the air, resulting in a much larger pressure gain at the small end. Sadly, intuition is wrong. In order to convert velocity energy into pressure, the air has to be slowed down, and this requires a duct that widens rather than narrows. Next time you fly on a commercial airliner, note that its engine intakes widen as the airflow approaches the compressor face. Such widening passages are called diffusers, and they are universally used in the conversion of velocity into pressure.

Language often plays tricks on us — especially when language is used by product advertisers. "Ram air" sounds much more appealing than "resonant airbox." Nevertheless, it is airbox resonance that actually generates a significant power gain.

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Cliffnotes:

-Ram Air a myth? = NO
-Does it work on a road car = NO
-At 150mhp there is next to no gain.
-Significant gains arn't seen until 300mph+
-The air box is the key, not the ducting.
-When buying a CAI/induction kit look for the one that uses air box resonance