Well, it's not technically a cold air intake. I got the idea from my bottle heater. Basically, I was thinking of a part, similar in design to a bottle heater, only instead of heating, it got colder. Basically, a cold wrap to wrap around, let's say the Frankencar midpipe, to lower intake temps.

I've never heard of or seen any kind of part that does this....but I figured if the intake temps are lowered enough, then there would be some gains. Am I overlooking something here, or would this theory work?

Just throwing an idea out there.....

 

The air is moving at such a velocity and cooling just the tube wouldn't make much difference. The air touching the tube surface might be cooled slightly, however charge air coolers typically slow the air and force it around hundreds of fins to appreciably absorb heat/cool the air.

Just my thought, but hey give it a try and let us know.

 

Gotcha...possible but inefficient.

 

cryo intakes, aluminum block/honeycomb with co2 gas circulating through them. cool idea buy i dont think it would prove much gains

 

Regardless....is there such a product similar to what I described?

 

yes
several

 

Wouldn't this cause some condesation inside the intake tube? Warm air from outside being drawn in and cooled....

 

yep and it creates frost on the intake block inside and out

 

look into peltiers and such

 

peltiers cool crazy.. but just like in computer applications it will cause condensation, now we dont want water in our engines do we =D

 

How much does HP increase relative to lowering the temperature?

 

According to this nifty onlince calculator i found, the diffrence in HP between 0*F and 100*F is about 10%hp, at 30"hg 40% humidity and 30ft + sealevel. The only problem is with these cryo intakes I dont think it could produce enough cooling effect to overcome the obstructions they create in the intake stream.

w00t

 

i agree, the air moving through the intake midpipe cools the midpipe more then you could with a cold wrap. The air going into a non supercharge/turbocharged car isn't hot enough to have a noticeable difference from attempting to cool the air that way.

 

Jeez, you'd really need a system that would be able to literally freeze the air coming in almost instantly... really really freeze it...

 

You need surface area to cool the air so this would not work on an intake. Imagine passing a hot iron over your hose to heat the water. The bottle heater works because the fluid is not moving.

Best bet would be to get an intercooler and a cryo spray to lower temps.

 

I got a crasy Idea, get a Small radiator, run alcohol thru it instead, and just mount it into your intake, it would block some air flow, but the air would be freezing a$$ cold, what you guys think of this Idea?

 

Ford has something similar in the intake manifold on the upcoming Lightning except they use the A/C refrigerant to cool the air for around a 50hp bump. However, it's limited to a push button for X-seconds and once the refrigerant is warm, it takes awhile for the A/C system to remove the heat.

 

Really?...Thanks

 

this is what a air-water intercooler is, and would only provide decent gains in a FI applications. In NA it would just block the intake and... suck

 

how about if you spread the fins really wide?

 

LOL this is getting funny

 

This thread is pretty much over.....

 

Any cyclical cooling method is going to rob more power than it produces (using your A/C freon to do it -- will you gain or lose power?). Using a limited supply of cooling fluid that would run out (like CO2 or whatever) would work in theory but why all the effort to get a 10 second "burst" of colder air? The design of the intake tract makes this inefficient.

 

There's a company that produces a chiller that runs from factory A/C to cool a tank of methanol / water mixture to run through an AWIC.

This should give extremely low intake air temperatures. The A/C clutch in most cars kicks out at 75% throttle, so when you are boosting you are using the stored 'coldness' in the tank. You decide how much capacity you want by selecting size of tank and size of chiller.

The company, coolflow , sells this as an add-on for some kind of supercharged Pontiac. (Grand National?) As I recall, the Pontiac kit costs 1,600 and they must not be selling well as the website is down!

They also sell parts for DIY applications.

 

Just move to alaska.. :\

 

....................

 

Except that Refridgerant is extremely flammable. If it starts leaking into your engine, its going to go boom.