what is the diff. between CAI and Ram Air

Whats the diff between a CAI and Ram Air?

Price wise
Performance wise
Sound wise?

did you google? I know the cai have problems with sucking in water(especially on low cars like yours) And its not really that cold of air coming in.

price wise = i built my own ram air setup for about 30$ and then bought a K&N panel filter to go into the stock box.

performance wise = an intake alone wont net you to much of an HP gain. a good ram air setup will out perform a CAI setup in my opinion

Sound Wise = really depends on the length of the pipe and the filter....the shorter and more free flowin your intake... the louder it'll be.

umm cold air intake = brings cold air in which cools stuff down and lets it perform better
ram air forces more air in, giving more performance
^someone correct me if im wrong
anyways, pretty sure a ram air would be safer/better performance for you
it'll sound nicer too

they all do the same, if you going to do real ram air do it like cammro or somethng to catch the air and put it some were CAI or aka warm air intake -- well with CAI depends on ow u do it u may get water and usally less performance wise, id say go with a FWI if any thing that way you get cold air but yet make it weather proff!

Just put a blower on it.

a CAI, usually sticks out underneath your fender, or sits behind your bumper.. outside of the engine compartment

a ramair intake, rams the air in through the front..
like in this picture, the air is being rammed into the intake through the headlight..

yeah to do ram air you would need a scoop or a intake tube going to the grille to ram air into it

a CAI is just an intake with the filter mounted outside of the engine compartment to avoiid pulling in hot underhood air.
but as stated above CAI's arent usually too good in the rain and will suck water into the motor. i may be wrong but i think there is something you can install to keep the water out of the motor tho......

uh w3rd...

CAI in my opinion are a joke. they do nothing more than make noise. mod the stock air box and wrap it with some heat reflective tape. removing the miles of ductwork under the hood MAY net 1-2 RWHP on a medium sized v-6.

the term "ram air" is misleading. for true ram air, the vehicle in question must be traveling in excess of 100 mph. so both styles are cold air intakes, they just go about it in different ways.

GlowinPontiac wrote:

yeah to do ram air you would need a scoop or a intake tube going to the grille to ram air into it a CAI is just an intake with the filter mounted outside of the engine compartment to avoiid pulling in hot underhood air. but as stated above CAI's arent usually too good in the rain and will suck water into the motor. i may be wrong but i think there is something you can install to keep the water out of the motor tho......

yes there is a part....its called a bypass valve. honestly a CAI or ram air by itself wont do anything!! now, coupled with a new throttlebody and exhaust, port and polish and headers and a good cleaning, you'll see some power gains. im getting all that as soon as i get my sc2, doing it in stages. tb and cai first then the p&p and headers and exhaust system next....anyways, that prolly didnt help anyone lol.

Its still not cold air unless you live in canada..... but on a serious note.. its not cold air unless its cold outside. Its still gonna suck hot air in the summer and then cold air in the winter.... its not cold.... just a little cooler then the engine bay.

so not even worth the money. say I came about like......350 bux to spend. What should i do with it. 50 for glow so that leaves me with ~300 for performance parts..

the proper term is "open air intake"

on a 1990 Ford F350 dually a magazine did a test. one run was with stock air box. next was a kn fipk. last was the stock air box modded and wrapped in the heat reflective tape. the last run made the biggest difference.

A new air intake is dependant on other mods you have, you might have all this air rushing in but once it hits the stock throttle body/intake plenum your doing absolutly nothing. Throw in a ported TB and upper and lower intake and then youll start seeing gains. But other wise it can sound pretty sweet

nos intake is pretty cold

Optika1 illushun wrote:

uh w3rd... CAI in my opinion are a joke. they do nothing more than make noise. mod the stock air box and wrap it with some heat reflective tape. removing the miles of ductwork under the hood MAY net 1-2 RWHP on a medium sized v-6. the term "ram air" is misleading. for true ram air, the vehicle in question must be traveling in excess of 100 mph. so both styles are cold air intakes, they just go about it in different ways.

Im pretty sure its alot higher then 100 mph for a true ram air effect.... at the speeds our cars travel at.. where going no where near fast enough to pressurize the air. A True Ram Air system will acctually produce an increase in psi in your intake system over the air pressure outside.... but this is not possible in anyones application on this board... or for any car on the road for that part... because our cars simply cant go fast enough to force enough air in and pressurize it. All it can do is minimize inefficiency.

i take my car over 100

Niether of these mods will do **** to your stock vehicle, so dont bother wasting your time / money

actually its 212? mph to achieve true ram air effect

cut out the bottem and sides of ur intake box, wrap the tubes going to the TB with silver heat reflective tape (if u want, replace with a more straight through design) and a good paper filter.

http://performanceunlimited.com/projectmpg/airtemp.html


http://performanceunlimited.com/projectmpg/aircleaner.html


thats proof enough, IMO.

if you have the car to do it, i would reccomend instead of a cai or ram, have the engine boared out and through headers+whole exhaust+blower thats straight power there. but you'll have a hell of a time driving it around on the street.

Rags wrote:

but you'll have a hell of a time driving it around on the street.

why

over heating, a blower puts out alot of power. like ALOT. and it overheats if its not constantly moving, so blower </3 stop lights.

edit: this is a blown engine. 50% hp increase.

thats so tight looking

its a fun car to drive

CAI's have the advantage in that you get a power boost from a dead stop. Ram air does not start kicking in until higher speeds. Ram air has it's water cons just like a CAI. If you make your own ram air setup you have to design it so water doesnt get into your engine. Basically this arugement is the same as mid length headers VS longtube header, so basically it is pointless. Your car is not going to be putting out enough power to even care what kind of air intake it uses (as long as your not using stock). I say go for which ever one is cheaper and put the money you save towards a set of headers or a cat back.

Optika1 illushun wrote:

CAI in my opinion are a joke. they do nothing more than make noise. mod the stock air box and wrap it with some heat reflective tape. removing the miles of ductwork under the hood MAY net 1-2 RWHP on a medium sized v-6.

Then the stock intake system works fairly well on that certain car. LPE's CAI showed a 12 RWHP gain on 95 Z28, hell even the 3.8L Camaro gain around 6 on average. IMO Silentdawn go to some car sites and look for dyno charts to show the gains of installing a CAI. Or do some searches and see if you can get a general idea of how restrictive the stock air box is. If the stock air box is very restrictive you can see a noticeable gain or like Optika said you might only see a 1 or 2 RWHP gain if the intake system is efficient from the factory.

you'll get a better performance gain from an underdrive pulley for your car.... i just took out my CAI and put it back to stock, cuz at least on my automatic, i lost alot of low end torque.. and gained alot in higher rpms.. , but my driving is stop and go most of the time so i want that torque off the line..

i dont know where your airbox is located, but on mine an easy way to do a "ram" air AKA warm air intake, is just cut the bottom of the airbox out so it draws cooler air from underneath, instead of on top in the engine bay, (but my airbox is at the front of the car)
just my .02 cents

blowers shouldnt cause overheating that bad if the car has a proper radiator and fan. preferrebaly an electric fan or two.

uh...whoever said turbo/blower add heat is only half right. if the cooling system is set up right it wont be a problem. u really cant force induce a motor that isnt made for it. 5-7 psi would be the most i would do on a stock engine.

anyway, CVF is pretty much right. bigger displacement cars will gain more and any engine will see a gain at higher rpms (who drives up there anyway)

in order to get 1PSI from Ram Air you would have to be traveling about 200MPH...i did the math before i just need to find it.

true, i think that was covered further up, most people mistake ram air for "warm air" intake ... depending on where the airbox is though, neons for example are at the front, so a ram air while moving are gettin fresh air constantly, idling in traffic with it sux though.. want to see where his airbox is in the engine bay to get an idea of what he's workin with..

Cerwin Vega Fan wrote:

CAI's have the advantage in that you get a power boost from a dead stop. Ram air does not start kicking in until higher speeds. Ram air has it's water cons just like a CAI. If you make your own ram air setup you have to design it so water doesnt get into your engine. Basically this arugement is the same as mid length headers VS longtube header, so basically it is pointless. Your car is not going to be putting out enough power to even care what kind of air intake it uses (as long as your not using stock). I say go for which ever one is cheaper and put the money you save towards a set of headers or a cat back.

I somewhat disagree with that statement..... a cold air intake and a ram air are almost basically the same...their taking colder air from a source outside the engine bay... the only advantage one has over the other is usually a CAI is shorter so you would gain a slight... and i mean slight better throttle response... but once you acctually get moving the ram air should out perform the CAI. a ram air system (depending on how its set-up will be just as good as a CAI if not better)

jethawk wrote:

Cerwin Vega Fan wrote: CAI's have the advantage in that you get a power boost from a dead stop. Ram air does not start kicking in until higher speeds. Ram air has it's water cons just like a CAI. If you make your own ram air setup you have to design it so water doesnt get into your engine. Basically this arugement is the same as mid length headers VS longtube header, so basically it is pointless. Your car is not going to be putting out enough power to even care what kind of air intake it uses (as long as your not using stock). I say go for which ever one is cheaper and put the money you save towards a set of headers or a cat back. I somewhat disagree with that statement..... a cold air intake and a ram air are almost basically the same...their taking colder air from a source outside the engine bay... the only advantage one has over the other is usually a CAI is shorter so you would gain a slight... and i mean slight better throttle response... but once you acctually get moving the ram air should out perform the CAI. a ram air system (depending on how its set-up will be just as good as a CAI if not better)

CVF has a point though, cuz you can modify the intake to get as much air as you want, but then if you dont upgrade your exhaust, headers and cat, it bottlenecks your exhuast, making it useless,,, it has no way to benifit from the increased flow in..

blowers will help a vehicle to overheat even with a working coolant system. unless you run an aftermarket super coolant system through the vehicle it will over heat quicker. because it uses the boost for power its natural to heat up quicker but since a blower is designed to pretty much just feed off of its own power and just keep the rpm climing it will overheat quicker because is has that much more power going through it. thats why you dont see alot of cars driving around the roads like the one i posted. a blower is more of a drag racing component than an everyday street one. try driving a blown engine around town. with a car like that at an idle all it can do is heat up. alot faster than with something small like a cai or short ram. the car that i posted is a blown engine designed for driving around. but because the blower is a drag component, it will still overheat after a while. try driving a car like that around a city for a day and tell me it wont overheat.

wtf dood...i know a few people who have supercharged cars and they dont over heat. what about factory blow'n cars?

is it stop and go because unless you are running a really good coolant system yet to be designed through that motor it will over heat. and by blown i mean going to summit and spending around 2-5 grand on a unit that sits on top of your motor around a foot over the hood that pushes a 47%-68% increase in horsepower, not gas milage, after market blowers are power with limits. they were designed for drag racing, not driving around town. coolant wise i am still yet to see a working coolant system for a blown engine that prevents it from overheating after around an hour or two of city driving. if you thought by overheating i meant 10 minutes after starting it, no, overheating like if you leave that thing running and drive it to run a few errends overheating.

well first off u didnt specify which blower u were talking about. ur talking about a roots style 4-71 or 6-71. i've seen a few of them at shows running around with no problems.

who in there right mind would use one of them on a DD anyway. theres more to this than over heating anyway. boost = more compression = detination. theres way to much to explain for me to type away.

what ur refering to is a race occurance and has no point in this post. most blowers are centifugal (looks like a turbo) or roots that sits under the hood. the "drag racing" versions are originally design for diesels and are mostly for bent 8s.

this is why i got on the topic of blown motors, i wasnt refering to low sets. i understand the heated air compression used as boost and all of that. but the whole time i was refering to overheating a blown motor i was refering to a blown motor such as this, which these do not like stop and go driving for extensive periods of times. you wont see these type of cars in parades much because of this reason, they can lay at lower rps for long because it will overheat.

Rags wrote:

over heating, a blower puts out alot of power. like ALOT. and it overheats if its not constantly moving, so blower </3 stop lights. edit: this is a blown engine. 50% hp increase.

if the pictures dont load here is the link to the type of car i was refering to http://us.f1f.yahoofs.com/bc/428c9ed5_d55b/bc/M...ts/I3010223.jpg?bfnesxCBh3a5NQqg

but what do they have to do with the topic at hand?

i mentioned it earlier on and someone brought it up again. he asked what the difference is and people starting making suggestions so i suggested a blower like that and posted a couple pictures. then it was brought up again and i said that it would overheat if you used it for street use. and then we started arguing technicals against a misunderstanding about versions of blowers and end here.