Weapon R Dragon Intake Review
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Randy Knight, on Engineering Explained's video was talking about laminar or straight flowing air, vs. turbulent flow and entrance length. He has a good grasp on some of the issues facing intakes for sure!
I reply:
+Randy Knight Something to add to your considerations is the intake manifold after the throttle body. It does more to handle what you're worrying about than the intake ever does. Intake valves don't just take air in, they also lose air back into the intake manifold and that's a tough consideration for engineers that have handled these issues wrong in so many ways (It's very complex and many better and worse things have been tried). Try David Vizzard's book on porting an engine.
As I think on your comment again, I really believe that the intake manifold design is the most important for what you're thinking on and a short ram or cold air intake's only role in this is the temperature and volume of air.
The short ram's concept is to minimize the resistance to getting more air, but as it may be drawing hotter air than the cold air intake, hotter air is supposed to be less dense.
I think a short ram works for me so well, because I've done some mods going for colder air only to find ways to heat things up instead for the colder months as engine's are designed to waste fuel just to stay hotter during those times - that's a power killer. I've recorded my views on these points.
The other thing to consider is that the cold air intake has more metal to take on heat and help pre-heat the air as it comes into the engine. I combated this by adding piping from the front of the car to blow on this metal and cool it down. Depending on the cold air intake, it could take care of this on it's own.
Link to the video with the above conversation:
Cold Air Intake vs Short Ram Intake - Explained by Engineering Explained
More after that reply:
In engineering explained's tests, he found that the short ram intake or SRI as he shortens it had more benefit between 2-3k RPM on his Integra and 4-5k RPM in 2nd gear for 3 runs averaged. He found a loss between 3-4k RPM. This may explain that my PCM is very smart on my Chevy Prizm as it usually switches gears just after 3k RPM even if I'm at WOT (Wide Open Throttle). The exception is when my family is in the car or I have a lot of tools in the car. Then it'll shift around 5,500 RPM and it'll have about the same wHP at shifting there as it would at 3k. If I do have a 3-4k power drop like Engineering explained did, it's explain why the PCM sticks with it through the losing period to get the 2nd gain rather than changing gears and having to climb back up to the power range available in higher RPM. This does assume that my PCM is infinitely wise in how it manages power as PCM or power control module implies. :) I found this written article much easier to extra data from than the videos themselves. Engineering Explained's Cold Air Intake vs Short Ram Intake - Explained.I have zero data between 1 and 3 k RPM about patterns of power as my torque app announces peak power at an RPM rather than giving me a useable graph (it has graphing, I just don't find it helpful in my tests). It's easy to get a feel at different speeds and RPM where my power is at by simply letting off the gas at a given speed.
By AutoBravado
