Ram air intake

[Lumberg]

Has anyone thought of putting a hood scoop into the front corner of the hood (near the battery) and creating a ram air CAI!?!?!?!

It would look kinda weird (like the tachs on the hood only facing the other way and at the front of the hood) but I bet you that designed right it could definitely make power at higher speeds.

I'm just fantasizing....if I mess around and make a CAI I want to incorporate ram air into it somehow. I haev seen stangs with the removable headlight. But I want to be able to run it all the time.

[SmokingTires]

You've got me thinking *thinking* AHH!!! That hurt!

You could do something like vents on each side. That would keep the look smooth and still give you the air flow. Let me do some chop work, I'll get back to you

[SmokingTires]

Sorry, didn't have time to chop. Other stuff I need to do. But I found this:



Like those only not so big and ricey. Maybe some suddle vents.

[Wibbit]

if you cut a hole in your bonnet for the vents, would you cut the structural members too? ive been thinking about it for a while but i really wanna keep that clean look.

[chronoti]

if you look back at my post http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/t39520.html there you can see where i took out the sound damper and i asked about using dryer hose for the intake, the gen 3 i know has the REAL intake part right behind the headlamp but you can seal it off and run a hose from the sound damper to the front bummper region and hide it behind the opening in the corner as you can see in the picture of wibbits car. and it would be a cheap as hell mod i think the hose is like 5~10 from home depot or k-mart where ever. might do this later today or tomorrow

[Wibbit]

yeh good idea chronoti, let me know how it goes... i tried to take out the plastic intake thing the other day but i gave up because the wiring to the fuse box was in the way and i dont know how to disconnect them safely, plus the battery prob needed to come out.

[amerikim]

Here is how I was thinking; skip cutting the hood or side panels.

Back a whiles ago, BMW used to race the long departed 3.0 and 2002s. If you remember beemers then, they had a 4 headlight setup. Well, they ran their air intake through one of the light ports.

I was thinking, and I was playing with the idea of going through the high beam portion of my front left light. I would reset both low beam lamps to single hi/low dual filaments or go with some other headlight option. Angel eyes, projector??.
Then I would bore a hole straight through the high beam headlight housing,back into engine bay, piping direct to air box.
Can you dig it?
Use stock headlight lens with hole bored and shaped right straight through with clear inlet piping , this would look sooo rad.
Can even play with adding a ring of light around the intake hole by light coming through the plastic, fiber optic style.

[WickedLexus96]

u could custom make some fenders that send air to your intake. just coming up with random things.

[SmokingTires]

If you run down through the side panel, does it connect up to the underside? If it does, you could run your intake down to the lower air dam. They make whole custom kits to do that. You could make one for cheap.

Or even cut out the old path through the 1/4 panel and just run the air box straight down and then to the front.

[Lumberg]

I see problems with the scenarios above:

a. hood louvres---pointed in the wrong direction.

b. chronoti's suggestion---I don't know how that creates a ram aor setup.

c. Is the hi-beam opening big enough? I figure you want to run 3" tubing throughout the thing. The "trumpet" woudl have to be bigger than that.

Here is what I just thought of:

You have a flap on the side of the car, maybe in front of the wheel where the air chamber is. It is servo activated and opens up much like the gas door flap, only facing INTO the wind stream. During normal operation the flap stays closed and air is taken from near the battery or under the wheelwell or whatever. But when you need that little extra boost, you flip a switch on the dashboard and the flap opens....giving you RAM AIR!

[SmokingTires]

^
Still not a REAL ram air. Ram Air sends air directly into the manifold due to forward movement of the car.

And even though the vents are facing the opposite way, they will still take in air. Much like a Cowl intake.

How would you go about closing the flap? It would be held open by air force as long as the car was moving. It would look tacky too.

You could always have custom vents put in your fenders and then just modify your air box to meet up with the vents. That would be the simplest (unless you want them as part of the fender and not just mounted on top).

[Wibbit]

doesnt ram air involve 'ramming' external air into the combustor using the forward speed of the vehicle... if it is you cant really ever have real ram air in our cars unless they name a supersonic jet Camry!

Originally posted by Lumberg
I see problems with the scenarios above:

a. hood louvres---pointed in the wrong direction.

im pretty sure those vents on the civic are NOT pointing the wrong way... they are designed to extract hot air from the engine bay, not to be an intake.

[amerikim]

Wibbit:
Ram air is when air pressure in the air box is artificially increased by using the forward motion of the whole vehicle. Even a slight positive pressure is better than any negative pressure or restriction. For ram air to work, it has to have a clear entry in clean air, not turbulant air as that would generate uncontrolled pulsing, undesireable in an intake system. It would need an airbox too

Smoking Tires V6:
The Civic setup picture you put up is for exhausting and extracting air up out of the engine bay. It works (theoratically) by the ramair effect when car is moving forward by all that dynamic air coming in through the front of the car and also by air passing over the vents themselves. since the vents are pointed away from the wind, there is a induced vacuum created and air is drawn out of the bay.

In racing, you may notice some or all of these ideas in application.
You would want the air in the bay to be dumping upwards over the windshield, not under the car as that creates lift and drag. Anything that creates lift is drag. Old racing firebirds had engine bay exhaust vents (D shaped) in the side of the front quarter panels. Wide body panels has exhausting of the engine bay just behind the front wheels, where the doors are.Now, since I drive on the street, I am not sure I want my daily driver continuously dumping waste air on my windshield. The airvents for your interior will be sucking up the smell of that engine bay plus all the oil and dangerous waste gas. You however can try this by removing the weatherstripping from the back portion of your engine bay.

Its all pretty interesting when you get into it. If you can get pictures or detailed models (the die cast ones suck) look at how the vents are laid out and what they hook too. For example, a popular position to mount fog lights under the Camry's front bumper is in the two lowest corner vents; those are there as air intakes for brake ducting in a racing application. Air scoops and dams funnel air into the bay, where it goes after that is up to you.

Pipe dream anyone?

[SmokingTires]

Well done

Thanks for the correction on the vents. I just grabbed the first thing that pulled up in a search (the civic).

[amerikim]

oops btw. if you do install any vents, scoops, etc. you do have to cut holes in your car's body.
If you don't, you are RICE.
Not that theres anything wrong with that.