Anyone else doing Ram Air?

[WilliamFd55]

Ram air set up I made from a gas can. Not sure how I feel about it? Thoughts? Does it look out of place?

[muley]

I like it.

[Big Block]

Should bring in cool air. Looks good to me.

[truckster]

Looks good. What's the intake tube made out of?

[Larry Weaver]

thats pretty darned cool!

[Andy4639]

Cool sir! I like the fab work and the use of the gas can for the base.

More of a cold air though than ram air. Which are both better for the engine.

[WilliamFd55]

Tube is Commercial 4" Flex duct, I used exhaust wrap to hide it.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Andy4639

More of a cold air though than ram air.

There is some ram effect there in front of the radiator support (which is why the radiator works, too).

K

[stikshooter]

Very nice.

[demian5]

Holy Crap! Look at that upper radiator hose!

[Andy4639]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

There is some ram effect there in front of the radiator support (which is why the radiator works, too).

K

Not sure what you mean by this but the cold air coming in is way more effective than the ram part is.

[67ChevyRedneck]

A "cold air" intake is typically an intake that's just been relocated to a cooler area under the engine bay. They usually pull in "dead air" that's surrounding them, but it's cooler air because it's farther away from the engine.

A ram air is forced air from the outside and because he went through the core support and is taking air from the front of the truck, I'd say calling it a Ram Air is fine and makes sense. The early firebirds (and even the late models) had Ram Air hoods that took air form the very front of the car.

The air flow would be significantly different if he just put one of those snorkle intakes behind the radiator support.

I like it, good job.

[KQQL IT]

Originally Posted by demian5

Holy Crap! Look at that upper radiator hose!

2010 ish silverado hose I believe

[67ChevyRedneck]

Yeah, I didn't notice it at first, looks like a carbed (or Fitech? style EFI) on a 5.3. I thought it was a plain old 350 at first glance.

[67 chevelle]

looks awesome , should work just as good as it looks

[Andy4639]

The cooling of the air is more important than the ram air effect if any on a carb or EFI system guy's.

A throttle-body-mounted air filter may look trick, but it ingests preheated under hood air from the radiator and the engine compartment. The best-running EFI cars breathe cold air from a front mounted inlet outside the motor compartment. The ram air effect doesn't even happen unless the vehicle is moving. How much depends on how fast your going.
The whole thing is about cooler air though and that is what he has coming in, so he is good.
Lot better than the guy's who just stick a tube over behind the head light with a filter under the hood anyway!
Blocking off the filter under the hood from the rest of the area helps but it's nothing compared to true cold air.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Andy4639

Not sure what you mean by this but the cold air coming in is way more effective than the ram part is.

You are correct. Cool air offsets any increase in restriction caused by the added plumbing.

What I am saying is that there is a high pressure area at the front of the truck (or the base of the windshield) that helps the air along the flow path. That's what would be considered ram air.

I would agree with this summary:

Originally Posted by 67ChevyRedneck

A "cold air" intake is typically an intake that's just been relocated to a cooler area under the engine bay. They usually pull in "dead air" that's surrounding them, but it's cooler air because it's farther away from the engine.

A ram air is forced air from the outside and because he went through the core support and is taking air from the front of the truck, I'd say calling it a Ram Air is fine and makes sense. The early firebirds (and even the late models) had Ram Air hoods that took air form the very front of the car.

The air flow would be significantly different if he just put one of those snorkle intakes behind the radiator support.

By way of background:

a) I designed the air induction system for the GMT800 version trucks, portions of which are still in use today.

b) The car pictured below is the '65 GTO that Pontiac engineering developed the '65/66/67 "ram air" package on. That car, and the prototype air pan, are sitting in my back garage, as they belonged to my father. In that application the car draws boundary air off the surface of the hood, so there is not much ram effect, but the resulting cool air was worth a .2 sec reduction in ET in the quarter mile.

As a result, I do have some fairly strong opinions (and objective data) on aftermarket "cold air" systems and engine air induction systems in general.

K

[68is4me]

That's a very cool idea. I like it.

[rsgt]

Looks good. I am working on one also.

[davepl]

The "high pressure" area you refer to in front of the radiator... it's enough to move air through the radiator's huge surface area, but it's not going to supercharge your cylinders or anything.

In other words, you're going to pick up some power from the colder air, let's say 5hp. And you're going to pick up some 'boost' from the ram air effect, let's say 0.00001hp

Of course I don't REALLY know what the numbers are, but the "ram air" effect is pretty minimal. It's not zero, but close.

Nice fabrication btw!

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by davepl

The "high pressure" area you refer to in front of the radiator... it's enough to move air through the radiator's huge surface area, but it's not going to supercharge your cylinders or anything.

In other words, you're going to pick up some power from the colder air, let's say 5hp. And you're going to pick up some 'boost' from the ram air effect, let's say 0.00001hp

Of course I don't REALLY know what the numbers are, but the "ram air" effect is pretty minimal. It's not zero, but close.

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

b) The car pictured below is the '65 GTO that Pontiac engineering developed the '65/66/67 "ram air" package on. That car, and the prototype air pan, are sitting in my back garage, as they belonged to my father. In that application the car draws boundary air off the surface of the hood, so there is not much ram effect, but the resulting cool air was worth a .2 sec reduction in ET in the quarter mile.

I apologize for addressing your analysis using 50 year old data, but here goes:

In the example above, it takes about 407 HP at the flywheel for this factory lightweight tripower GTO to run a baseline of 12.42 in the quarter mile, in NHRA B/Stock trim.

Adding the ram air pan and completely removing the hood scoop nose piece (hood ornament) and hood bracing behind the opening decreases the ET to its B/Modified Production best of 12.18, which requires about 420 HP to achieve.

That's a 13 HP increase, primarily from the introduction of cooler air (not much ram effect). That might not sound like much, compared to your estimate of 5 HP (although it's more than double) but if you know any racers you'd know that they would kill their own mother if it would result in a two tenths reduction in ET.

I'm familiar with what we in engineering call "directionally correct but not measureable" changes, but this is not one of them.

I have asked my GM Powertrain contact if he has any current rule-of-thumb guidelines that they use for HP vs air temp or HP vs ram. I've forgotten what we used on the GMT800 program, as that was 20 years ago.

K

[davepl]

I believe the power increase for temp is 1% for every 10 degrees, or that's what I read. Let's say you drop the air from 140F ro 90F, that's 5%. On a 300hp motor, that's 15hp.

But my point was whether it's 5 or 15, it's a lot more than the ram air effect, that's all I meant.

[truckster]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

You are correct. Cool air offsets any increase in restriction caused by the added plumbing.


As a result, I do have some fairly strong opinions (and objective data) on aftermarket "cold air" systems and engine air induction systems in general.

K

I like William's idea and I plan to build something like it. Keith, what would you recommend for intake plumbing? I'm running a mildly built Vortec 5.7 with a Quadrajet, and your opinion is greatly appreciated.

[engineer_gregh]

Very nice fabrication work, I like it a lot!!

[Andy4639]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

You are correct. Cool air offsets any increase in restriction caused by the added plumbing.

What I am saying is that there is a high pressure area at the front of the truck (or the base of the windshield) that helps the air along the flow path. That's what would be considered ram air.

I would agree with this summary:



By way of background:

a) I designed the air induction system for the GMT800 version trucks, portions of which are still in use today.

b) The car pictured below is the '65 GTO that Pontiac engineering developed the '65/66/67 "ram air" package on. That car, and the prototype air pan, are sitting in my back garage, as they belonged to my father. In that application the car draws boundary air off the surface of the hood, so there is not much ram effect, but the resulting cool air was worth a .2 sec reduction in ET in the quarter mile.

As a result, I do have some fairly strong opinions (and objective data) on aftermarket "cold air" systems and engine air induction systems in general.

K

That's a cool car.
I wished my dad had been able to keep some of his company cars when he was with GM. 7 kids though made that tough I guess. Here is my cold air setup in my 71 C10 with 2004 6.0 installed.

4" hole in support


94 caddie air box modified to take 4" ninty. I sealed the factory opening up




Finished product. Yea I need to get the bend out of it but as of yet I haven't found anything that works.