Well I was wondering if I was to change my intake to the turbo and run it to the headlight area. Just remove the headlight and run a streight pipe with no filter to the turbo. Would I benifit from this? It goes down in the fender wall now. So I guessing it would just ram more air into the turbo. Could any one give me an idea of the power gain that it might would make. the only thing is my Maf meeter is in line with this pipe.

 

The only benefit that I could see would be fresh cool air. I don't think a ram air would give an N/A car more than 1psi of manifold pressure. With a turbo that extra psi could just be attained by turning the boost up.

 

oh realy I was just thinking it would just push the air in a lot easy benifiting some more power. But im not realy sure

 

it may be good cosidering if you ram air in the turbo it won't have to work as hard resulting in cooler dischage and raising efficiency just a speculation

 

good point just wondering if its worth the trouble. Some of the gurus will chime in sooner or later.

 

Sorry man, but the idea of a ram air on a turbo car will not help in the least. When the car is running the exhaust temp is between 650 and 850 at idol. When you are under boost that temp jumps up to a max of 1200 deg F. As soon as that air goes through the turbo it is instanly heated up to a temp well above ambient. With your air intake being in the fender area you would not realize a gain at all. In reguards to functional ram air, you would have to be going 700 MPH to create enough force to pressurize all the air in the intercooler piping. Then you wouldn't need a turbo, you'd have a gas turbine.
I haven't done the math that the others would, but I think my reasoning works.
Choray

 

Actually, if that were true none of the turbo drag racers would be doing a ram air setup. I'm sure it would help out but mostly depending on the speeds you're going. If it didn't do anything, the drag racers wouldn't be doing it.

http://www.nhrasportcompact.com/2005/drivers/index.html

 

For the "ram" air effect to actually work, you would have to reach speeds that are not possible with ground vehicles. You can't physically get moving fast enough to force the air to condense in the intake manifold. I don't remember where, but I read it was half the speed of Mach1 for it to even slightly take effect.

edit: Sorry Choray, I read your post after I posted.

 

You wouldn't need to pressurize the air in the intercooler piping or the manifold, the turbo is taking care of that. The air in the pipe between the compressor and inlet would be what needs to be pressurized. However, even if this did get pressurized, and if the turbo picked up this pressurized air and compressed it further, you would still hit the same boost as you would normally due to whatever sort of boost control you are running. The only benefits would be cool air as opposed to the engine compartment, and maybe less heat after compression. I think the time would be better spent getting an intercooler sprayer, or alcohol injection.

 

Although the effect would be minimal wouldnt it make the compressor operate more efficiently to compress air that is already pressurized a bit. The compressor would not have to work has hard to get to a given PSI output so the airtemps on the compressor outlet would be a bit less. This effect would be minimal on a street car, but on an all out 200mph drag car it could help a little. This might allow a few more PSI or a few degrees of ignition timing advance. I think this is part of the reason all the pro turbo drag cars put the turbo intake horn in a spot where it gets good air flow.

 

On the drag cars they are trying to get as much air as possible in the motor in the shortest path. If you look at a drag car up close the piping is only 2 feet long at the most because 90% of those cars don't use intercoolers. They have aftercoolers that use either dry ice, liquid nitrogen or ice water. On a street car the piping cabe up to 8 feet long, making the ram air effect a moot point.
The whole purpose of ram air is to use the positive pressure comming off the front of the car to create pressure in the N/A manifold, thats why on a WS-6 the ram portion is right at the intake of the upper plenum. The air goes right in the motor with a little positive pressure and minimal temp increase.

Choray

 

The point isn't to pressurize the intake piping whatsoever, that's what the turbo is for. The point would be to make the turbo work less which would likely lower temperatures which would mean more power.

No one here uses an intercooler...
They're all technically aftercoolers.

 

Choray was talking about NA cars.

 

mardi i said the same thing a couple of posts back...... we're thinkin' the same way

 

he was talking about turbo cars too...

 

Give it a whirl and let me know how it works.
Choray

 

I don't have to... all of these pro drag racers that run a turbo setup are doing it. Why would they put a very expensive piece of equipment on the front of the car, with no filter, taking a huge chance of sucking something in ruining the turbo and/or the motor if it didn't do anything?

If I didn't see any gains I sure as hell wouldn't be putting an expensive turbo out front like that.

A good rule of thumb with cars should be, if its used for racing it most likely works.

Granted some things used in racing wouldn't likely work on street cars or wouldn't be beneficial.

 

I think they put their turbos out front to get the coolest air possible, not to make the turbocharger "work" less because of the miniscule .1psi or whatever they get from the air being "forced" into it. These guys aren't even close to running the maximum airflow their turbos can support in most cases, so adding extra psi without having to turn up the boost is irrelevant to them.

Also I think you guys underestimate how many of these teams just do something because they saw another team doing it and running good times. Most of these teams don't put their cars in wind tunnels and test out different turbo positions and all that jazz. They put their turbos out front because someone saw their competitors doing it, and those guys saw other guys doing it, etc. You could probably trace the entire thing back to a couple guys who had an idea that it "probably helps". I severely doubt any aerodynamic testing has ever been done on the placement of the turbo.