Cold Air Intake. Yes or No?
 

Anyone here have a cold air intake on their ride? Any performance gain? Have pictures? I'm thinking of installing one on my 67 GTO, 400 CI, stroker. The biggest dilemma is where to mount the intake area. There's ample room behind the fender.

I have personally owned a couple of Ram Air Kits made by this company in Canada:

Air Inlet Systems
177 Grace Ave.
Hamilton, Ontario.
Canada L8H-3X1

E-Mail : ais@ramairbox.com

Web Site: https://www.ramairbox.com/

https://www.ramairbox.com/product.html

Tell them Tom Vaught recommended them when you talk to the owner.

Very high quality stuff and professional looking.

Tom V.

On a carbureted vehicle, I don't know that there's much data to suggest a cold air intake, like that you find on a modern vehicle, is worth much of any performance.

The carburetor naturally lowers the intake charge temp as a by-product of the atomization of fuel that happens in the venturies. Now it stands to reason that if you're bringing in cooler air to begin with you may be cooling the charge more, however the carb venturies are also highly sensitive to airflow at the throat and many cold air intakes that you see used on these cars don't really help out with that. What you may be gaining from a performance standpoint from having a colder air/fuel charge, you may lose in air column velocity at the carb's throat.

Barring the ability to use a stack, likely the best upgrade based on your photos is to go with as large of an open element filter as possible and if room permits, use a filter base that is not dropped. These typically provide for the best flow to the carburetor.

There's a really great episode of Engine Masters that is available on YouTube that tests a bunch of this stuff. A velocity stack in many cases slightly improves on performance over no air-cleaner at all. All others tend to rob some power from an un-filtered carburetor.

As Tom mentioned, Air inlet has good options. On my 66 I mounted the air intake tubes behind the headlight area/corners of the fenders, and for my 73 gto I used the oem firebird style air ducts, mounting them on either side of radiator to pull air front the large area of what I call the "tool tray".

No hard data on power gains, but my A/F would always read a little leaner vs an open element air cleaner , so I assume the engine was liking the cooler air.

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I and Gale Banks would disagree with you on this post. It depends on the installation and parts.

https://www.bankspower.com/c-13-prod...e-systems.html

Tom V

Forgot to mention... on the A body, their 3 x14" dual inlet box works well, especially with a spun aluminum drop base. I think the one I used was a 1" drop, but they can make recommendations.

I simply used aluminum semi rigid dryer vent tubing for the ducts, and at times threw the open air cleaner on for car shows, although the ram air box would stir up a few questions from show goers.

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This is what I have. You won't be able to do it the same, it works with my cowl hood well. Some of the kits mentioned above would work well with a stock hood.
Cooler outside air is always better for power and I would assume fuel mileage. A ram effect or high pressure source is even better to optimize the setup.
As far as what I've seen with my car, it runs quicker with the cowl setup then a regular air cleaner in all weather. It runs much much quicker as the outside air cools, I normally jet up in the fall as well.

I have used personally and built for others, a system similar to the pic that Tom V posted. On every car it was worth some ET at the race track. I have used 4" and 5" tubing to the air housing. Just getting cooler air than whats under the hood, and adding a forced or ram air effect at speeds.

There are reproductions of the 1967 GTO Ram Air system.
No dilemma on the air intake area.

On any car I have tested it tends to be worth a tenth or two at the track.

K

Even Milt got Mr Sherman's 64 Tri-Power GTO (Wanger's Red Car) when Milt talked them into letting him run it with a "Cheater" engine (more cubes, well ported 64 Heads by "Birdie", Custom Headers, etc), to run in the low 11s with his very basic RAM AIR "COWL INDUCTION" TRI-POWER Air Cleaner set-up.

Tom V.

I’ve always thought that ‘64 Ram Air set-up was cool. No pun intended. With the hood down, no one ever knew it was there.
https://www.google.com/search?q=1964..._PvvbOyUSB-2HM

MORE INFO ON THE 64 GTO RAM AIR SET-UP HERE:
Article says 1.5 mph improvement in the quarter in 1964

http://musclecarfilms.com/Pontiac_Ram_Air.html

Tom V.

That's exactly what I would do and what I was going to suggest. With a 67 GTO, and the repo pans available, why not put a factory style system on it.

We have 4 cars here that all use the factory OEM ram air or cold air setup. 2 Pontiacs and 2 Chevrolets. They all work exceptionally well and are in fact worth a pinch of ET at the track.

On 2 of the cars that have Super Sniper Stealths on them, I can monitor the air inlet temperatures, and there is in fact a very big affect on the air temps when the hoods are functioning. I can literally watch the air intake temps rise while sitting still, and come back down to almost right at outside ambient temps once the car moves about a mile down the road.

That stock air cleaner is for sure robbing you of power. As far as a cold air intake goes, I gave this topic some thought for my '66 as well. Ultimately, I decided to open the hood scoop insert and use a factory style ram air pan instead of installing an aftermarket setup with big tubes running everywhere. Given that it's unlikely to yield meaningful benefits on the street, I couldn't justify cluttering up the engine bay to that degree, and I also think most of the aftermarket setups are unsightly, but that's subjective. I just figured the hood already has a scoop that looks like it should be pulling in cooler air, so why not make it a reality. Pontiac gave you a pre-made template for cold air induction!

Once you make the mods to the hood (1965-1967) to remove the stuff that is in the way of the air actually going smoothly into the tray, the Pontiac stuff works ok.

Some do not want to Mod the Hoods like the racers did in the old days so they might not see the same benefits as the actual race modded 65-67 hoods.

Tom V.

My Grandfather owned a 1964 Dodge with the 426 wedge engine and push button auto trans. I saved articles on what MOPAR did for scoops that worked in the early years and in college did a Engineering Study on Hood Scoop Designs with a buddy on his 1964 GTO Drag Car. We had a spare hood from a Lemans that we modded for true fresh air into the engine. We put yarn "tuffs" on the hood to document air flow on the hood at different speeds. We also actually measured the airflow and pressure inside the Hood Scoop.

The best design at the time was the MOPAR Single Snorkle inlet scoop with 30 inches of
area for the opening. Most Pontiac air inlet openings are far from that size area.

That was a fun project.

Tom V.

https://www.allpar.com/threads/devel...issile.229273/

Can see the engine has a single plane on it. But can’t make out what it is, kind of looks like a HSD or similar copy? The ram air pan should be a good option with a HSD intake, some of the other taller single plane it would take some major fabricating.

Switching to a filter type lid air cleaner and running the RA inlets open would be a start. That doesn’t look like a friendly HP air cleaner in the photo. Drop base with a short filter will rob some power.

For super stock and stock NHRA rated the 67 to 70 engines with ram air 30-35 hp more on about all the engines that had the option of ram air. I think that is a stretch, I think it is interesting that is how they indexed the engine though, maybe all out racing is the difference. I would guess probably more like 15-20 hp covers it for about any engine here in the street section. I have only been around the 68 to 70 cars a bodies with RA, can’t say that those systems were overly effective. Probably the design of the front end makes a difference. The Mopar air grabbers that mopars used from 1970 to 72 when you hit the switch going 70 it was like you kicked another carb in. Having that big vacuum operated door kick open at 70 mph and hear the engine roar was just plain cool. They had good sized opening then with the raised bulged hoods the air door was above that in clean air. Those max wedge scoop set ups like Tom mentioned really woke the cars up also, i recall reading about big gains on mph with those. Ugly, but all function. Lol

Here is a photo of the cold air induction Floyd Hand had on his 66. Pretty wild.

I was going to mention earlier just for giggles that the NHRA refactored the cars with functional cold air. Leading to the theory that these systems had some affect, enough to make the NHRA come up with a rule. Back then it had many racers switching their factory cold air setups to non functional hoods too so they could get in the lesser class, and sometimes go back and forth.

That photo that shows Floyd's setup is simply using the cowl area, which has been known to work well since the late 50's early 60's. Nascar still uses that method today.

Grabbing air from that high pressure area close to the windshield works really well on the cowl hoods on my SS Chevelle and Z/28. One of which I've monitored intake air temps on I mentioned earlier. Been racing that car for 35 years and for sure the car has run it's best times with that system functioning.

Cowl plenums going right through the firewall were on some OEM cars like the 63 Z11 Impala and the 67-68 Z/28 camaros. Those cowl plenum air cleaner setups are reproduced today, a little spendy though.

Leave the dryer ducts in the laundry room.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/35221264623...cAAOSw7yZbSXoY

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/0ocAA...oY/s-l1600.jpg