I had the idea, but figured I should run it by you guys first to see what you all thought. I recently got a custom CAI done, however, it really doesn't seem like its CAI, more like cooler air. What they did is basically installed a cone filter and some piping to the air filter, then left my stock intake on to cool the air going into the cone filter. However, on hot days, the air going into my filter can't be that cool. So I was thinkng, what if I put a slit in my hood, about an inch above my grille, and 4-5 inches wide to bring more cool air into my stock inake, which would in turn send it to my cone filter. Obviously I'd have to put anothe slit next to it on my hood, just for looks, but would my idea work?????

-Ian

 

I cant answer you question directly but if the intake gets air that is the same temp as the outside (even on very hot days) it is still cool air to the engine. The engine runs at 900F (don't quote me on that but I think it's close) and that is the temp air it gets when the intake is not cold air. With a CAI if it gets 110F the engine thinks you are at the North Pole. So a few degrees propably won't make much of a difference.
Good Luck,
Paul

 

wow, thanks a lot for the reply, it was actually very informative. I guess my best bet would be to leave it the way it is and not f*** with it.

-Ian

 

If you want it for the looks go ahead and do it if you are positive you wont do damage, then maybe more will follow and you will start a new trend.
Good Luck,
Paul

 

Why don't you just pull your hood and tell us how much it helped
Then you can decide on whether your slits are worthwhile.
-hype

 

I was thinking of installing a piping system would bring cool air from the bottom up in front of the cone filter... Is there space for this? Also, what kinda materials did they use (material of pipe and the width of pipe). If i did all this and hypothetically it did bring in cooler air to the intake, what kinda gains should i expect. thanks

 

Like I said I dont think it will be much. Decreasing the air from 900F to 100F only brings in about 10 HP (max, propably even lower but I will say 10 to be safe). So if you put a refrigirator in your engine and lower the air to 40F you won't get much of a gain. Also I just searched a little and the avarage engine temp is around 1300F, if you want to get scientific on me.
Good Luck,
Paul

 

I would be careful about slicing slits in your hood. Along with what others have said about temp, etc., if water penetrates the cone element (K&N filter) serious damage to the motor can occur. I assume your car is driven in the rain, and risking that for a *minor* gain in power is, IMO, not worth it.

Good luck in whatever you decide to do.

Clint

 

I hate to disagree with you but...

The combustion chamber and exhaust gasses can be around 1,300F not the air temp in the engine compartment. Temperatures that high would vaporize the fuel inside the fuel lines and burn paint very quickly which would look like crap on your hood (but you could cook a pizza pretty quick). Even 900F would cause all kinds of problems for anything that is plastic or liquid under the hood.

The engine's heat raises the air temp inside the factory intake piping because it is routed pretty close to the engine. The CAI takes a much more direct route to the throttle body so it doesn't pick up as much heat. Both the CAI and the factory intakes pull air from outside the engine compartment so the difference in the air temp inside the intakes is not that great. The biggest advantage the CAI has is it's very smooth and straight (although a little long) design. It doesn't have all the weird bends, resonators, and accordion flex sections which disturb and slow down the incoming air.

If the air temp was the only advantage over the factoy set-up the hybrid intakes wouldn't work anywhere near as well as they have been shown to. Insome cases they work better than CAI's and they do pull air in from under the hood. Its all about flow.

 

Yes that is true, but the air is still much hotter then the CAI. I can't tell you for sure about how hot the air in the intake is but Im sure it's close to 200-400F. Also what you gain from the CAI is not only the cold air like you said, the fact that it's smooth and larger plays a very big role, however, the aftermarket non CAI also has that. The cold air propably doesn't give you more then 3 HP (propably even less) so to lose 20-30 degrees of the temp would not give you much (propably nothing).
Thanks,
Paul

 

The SAE correction factor for horespower is approximatly 1% per 10 deg, so on our ~200 hp engines about 2 HP per 10 deg. So to lower the air temp by 40 deg would give a noticable gain of about 8 HP, but there is still some debate if the CAI gives any advantage once the car is moving.

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....hreadid=110241

I did an underhood temperature test and found that the underhood temp was between 90 and 100 degrees on a 60 degree day at low speeds. When my Warpspeed CAI finaly gets here I plan to do more testing.
http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....hreadid=115088