yes indeed, when they can easily make those pipes on machines in China using $2/day laborers, i can hardly compete with using skilled American workers laying carbon fiber

 

Mingster = > Your design is DEFINANTLY a step in the right direction, your price on CF is absolute rock bottom low as compared to Spoon which seems to have a 1000% markup for the same thing.

 

Before I really did my homework, I got the RM Racing CAI. I really cannot say whether it made a plus difference or not. When the weather got well into the 90s here in Louisville, performance suffered. I insulated those beautiful polished aluminum pipes and it seemed to be significantly better. They no longer were absorbing heat from the engine bay.

STILL - there is no getting away from the fact that the filter is right smack in the middle of the engine bay and is bound to be sucking in hot air - air heated by the engine and air coming thru the radiator and heated by it. I am confident that the air coming in from the cold air intake mounted in front of the radiator helps, but probably not until the car is moving at a pretty good clip - say 50mph or more.

Seems to me that the stock airbox might be a better design, since it takes air coming into the engine bay from OVER the radiator. If that is so, then the Mingster CAI which simply routes pre-radiator air into the stock box ought to be the best of all.

As to the stock airbox, I've read a number of posts as to whether it is well designed from the factory. One of the Austrailian shops claims to have made significant hp gains by a variety of routes, but in particular they say that the stock box is NOT very good.

Sure wish we had some good dyno figures to test the various types of intakes where it was not dependent upon the car moving. For example - the RM Racing one w/o the cold air option, simply ends with their conical filter just in front of the engine and behind the radiator. That could by dyno tested w/o being concerned about the cold air intake not being in play on a motionless car.

I'm no engineer, but common sense does seem to favor the Mingster approach in the absence of hard dyno data. What do you guys think?

 

I agree........from playing around with ideas to solve that same "summer heat" issue. I insulated the stock box and built a CAI that evolved to a ram air system to pressurize the stock box. I am gulping air in, from the front grill (6x6 intake port) and at about 40 mph you feel a quicker response; now with the addition of a K&N filter, the "restriction or slight lag to respond" down low has gone. The other side of that is, I did not feel any increase at higher speeds that should have built pressure. So I think that the ram air pressures countered the restrictive nature of the stock filter. With the addition of a less restrictive air filter the effects of the ram air are more marginal.

I will be hanging a set of headers and a neuspeed exhaust on later next week. It will be interesting to see what opening up the back side will do. The benifits of the ram air may change once again.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by tpn
[B]I agree........from playing around with ideas to solve that same "summer heat" issue. I insulated the stock box and built a CAI that evolved to a ram air system to pressurize the stock box.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 9000RPM
[B]I don't think they copied AEM's intake at all.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by The Reverend
[B]
Also, Mingster, AEM does not use foreign $2/day laborers.

 

Hey Reverend,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with Injen. My experience was a totally different one from yours. I was shown around their facilities. They offered to let me go to the dyno (but I couldn't make it) I trusted them enough to let them take my ride because my experience with them was good. They had an initial design on my car, but they re-did it and gave me the finished product. I highly doubt that they copied AEM's intake because there's was done quite sometime before you had your post for AEM CAI. Also, there was a few re-designs to get the end product. Again, sorry to hear about your experiece, but I wanted to let everyone know that was not the case at all with my experience with Injen.

 

Here is a link to the pic's I posted on another thread.

https://www.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.php?...&threadid=21142

The gasket is glued down and secure now. On the hood itself I added some selfstick 1/2" weatherstripping to mate up with the lower gasket and airbox to seal it off completly. I have also changed the 6" tubing to a smooth interior surface to slow down turbulance.

The bottom gasket is made of 3/4" copper water pipe insulation.
The intake port is a dryer vent with the flapper door removed attached to a 6" tube going straight up through the cowling. I found that the 45 degree angle flows air better than an elbow joint. The main idea was to use the hood and cowling as part of the CAI.

Still want to open the faux ducts up and dump one infront of the radiator to make up for the lost air volume across it because of the large intake port and dump the other duct behind the radiator to increase the flow to the compartment.

 

I have been out of this mainly because it appears to be a discussion based upon good theory, subjective observations, and hearsay but no real testing. Without some convincing before and after statistics how/why could anyone argue a design?

It seems like Pinky and Luis were discussing a method to run credible tests at speed, and that is the kind of data that would move me to do something.. before seeing that I question that these CAI