Direct-Air Intake/Scoop Idea
 

Some thoughts came to mind as I started researching cold-air intakes for our cars. I'm about the pull the trigger on the VMS CAI, until the DIY-idea started flowing in.

Looking through Perrin's blog on the airflow, you'll see in the image below of how air is processed through the front-end. Question came to mind, why is it that we wouldn't want turbulent air from entering the intake. If you had a CAI, the filter will rest where the holes in the plastic wall is, allowing for less restrictive air flow.

Attachment 54969


If airflow comes in from the bottom of the radiator up, out through the wall with holes, why couldn't we dremel out this opening for more airflow?

This all kinda started when I was looking at replacing the front crash foam with the BeatRush Front Beam Bar. Cleans up the front bumper, and could potentially allow for an air scoop. On my BMW, RPI developed an air scoop that would mount behind the front grill. This scoop would force air straight into the airbox when driving at normal speeds. I thought of an idea to create a similar scoop that'd start from the bottom of the bumper, upwards to the plastic wall with holes. See below for what I mean...

Attachment 54970

Would any manufacturer be interested in this concept? @PERRIN_Mladen @Mishimoto

I'll try to mock up a design out of sheet-metal so you all can have an idea of what I mean.

.ck

Maybe the "plastic wall with small holes in it" is for keeping the tube clear?

I wouldn't want my intake to get clogged up with leaves and then have to take the whole bumper off to clean it.

HKS makes a Scoop that replaces your stock tube with a large scoop that sits behind the bumper.


http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43737

I saw that, but what about for cold air intakes? I don't think that scoop would fit if the filter is in that spot.

.ck

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A certain degree of turbulence is useful for atomizing fuel -- that is engineered into the intake already. Any turbulence beyond that can cause a drop in performance due to varying air pressures. Automotive engineers aren't stupid -- they've already thought of this stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inlet_manifold#Turbulence

Good point, I didn't think of that

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That sounds like it would be good, but it wouldn't work unless the car was running Speed density (where the MAF sensor isn't used for "load" calculations). The reason is that the air flow and pressure generated from the car going above 30MPH affects how the car runs.

When we tested removing that plastic meshy wall, the car would stall and die if you were going 35PMH+ then decelerating to a stop. In this scenario, a lot of people just push in the clutch and hit the brakes which drops the engine speed to 1500-ish RPM. The airflow and pressure generated changes the "load" so much the engine dies. Under light load cruising, this messes with fuel trims which eventually leads to long term fuel trims being off, which then can affect full throttle fueling.

So long story short, creating something that forces air into the engine isn't going to work unless a custom tune is done using speed density type tuning. For an NA setup, this isn't needed and would take a lot of time to do. At some point when people start pushing the HP limits of the stock engine, this may be work a few extra HP.

Very interesting in how it does that. So why is there no affect for cold air intakes since they allow more air into the system? I'm missing something here, sorry!

.ck