theres a lot of threads goin on now about air intake mods. and it got me thinkin about a cold air intake. what does it take to achieve a cold air intake?

 

I don't know if anyone read this, but you may have seen the article a while back on PUTC about the Ford Lightning concept. It had a supercharged 5.4 Liter V8. It had this special "super cooler" technology that stored cold air in a small tank that was charged up from the air conditioning system. When the truck was pushed to WOT, this 30-45 second charge of air was injected into the air instake pushing the truck to 500 Horsepower (it said this techonlogy gave the truck 50 extra HP).

Part of me wonders if you could redirect a duct using some hose from your convential A/C ducts that feed cold air into the cab, into the intake, for a constant supply of cool air. It sounds "dreamy" but it probaby wouldn't work. Or?

 

We got to talking about that very thing the other day at an engineering meeting. The consensus was that if the ducting could deliver enough cold air to really help, it would suck all the cold air from the system and you'd get hot in the car, so something like that. It was also decided that the horsepower you'd get would pretty much match the horsepower it takes to run the compressor and fan, so it's a wash. This explains the complexity in execution of the Lightning system - storing cold air for a dense dose, rather than a constant supply. But of course, this 'engineering meeting' was in a bar and we weren't really all that scientific about it... (Although one of the guys is a chief engineer for Mitsubishi and I value his opinions tremendously.)

 

Flamedx4 - Are there A/C compressors that could run off of the truck battery (much like an amp for your speaker system works) that might provide enough juice, or at least some, to make a difference?? This would provide little consequence to that of a convential belt driven A/C Compressor that sucks HP as you're only using power which can be recharged (if there is enough power from the battery anyways).

 

Not really, the air conditioner takes anywhere from 10-20 (or more) horsepower to drive it! This is why you notice it's on when you go to pass someone. A 10 horsepower electric motor is HUGE. But remember - the alternator would have to make the power anyway, it still takes engine horsepower to turn the alternator to make the juice to drive the electric motor - it's actually less efficient to do it that way and would suck even more hp from the engine.

 

Ok, Ok, how about blocks of ice.

Ok, Ok, another one - Sit a big white deep freezer in your bed. Plug it into an inverter. Rig up some hose up into the inside of the deep freeze. Run this hose to the intake.

Will that work?

 

Have you read the thread about the top rated gay and lesbian rides yet?

wade

 

lol!

 

whatever you use to cool the air is going to have some sort of parasitic loss on the truck, weither it be ice thats heavy or an electric motor stealling electrical power or a/c condensor using up engine power

 

Move to Canada. Minus 44 with windchill right now here.

 

thats ok its cold enough here.

all these other "cold air" intakes i see have a heat shield around the filter. what materials do i need to make a heat shield? also i think im guna use header heat wrap stuff to wrap around the intake tube

 

anyone know?

 

well if i was going to do one (right now i have a cheap one from ebay that was bored out and re bent and some other little tricks by a ricer friend (who has a 900 horsepower crx mind you) but we want to make a true cold air by))..... dropping it down through the engine bay somewhere and mounting an amsoil in front of the front valence with a funel type shape going to the filter. should work pretty damn well and then ceramic coat the pipe and wrap it in header stuff

 

hm that sounds interesting.
can i get this header wrap stuff from autozone?