Everything You Need to Know About Cold Air Intake Systems

At times, you just want to make your ride powerful and fun to drive on the roads. To do this, you need to make changes to your car’s engine, like adding new exhaust system and cold air intakes. Cold air intakes are an inexpensive modification, as well as easier to install compared to other engine modifications.

Function

Cold air intakes move the air filter out of your engine’s compartment. This enables cooler air to be sucked into the vehicle’s engine for combustion. Cooler air facilitates denser air or additional oxygen into the engine’s combustion chamber and hence more power.

The filters are moved to the upper part of the wheel or next to the fender. This is because there is improved access to free flowing and cooler air and less hot air from the vehicle’s engine next to the fender or the wheel’s upper part.

Design Features

There are some of the key strategies that are used in designing the aftermarket cold air intakes and these include:

Minimizing the length of the intake

Facilitating an enhanced direct route to the air intake by removing muffling devices

Improving parts of the intake, which create turbulence to minimize air resistance

The Associated Risks

There is high possibility of the aftermarket cold air intake posing risk to your vehicle.

Cold air intake systems can increase noise. This is because the stock air filtration systems feature resonator-based muffling tubes. Removing the tubes minimizes loses associated with pumping.

You can easily experience hydrolock. This is because the intake opening might be near to the street compared to the original-equipment air intake. This will make water to move into the engine while you are driving in flooded areas.

Construction

Cold air intake systems come into different styles and are manufactured using rubber, plastic, metal or composite materials such as Kevlar, fiberglass or carbon fiber. The most efficient cold air intake systems make use of the air box that is trimmed to complement your vehicle’s engine and extend its powerband.

The most basic cold air intake has a plastic tube or short metal resulting to a conical air filter. Power might be lost to specific engine speeds. However, some of the cold air intakes utilize heat shields in order to separate the air filter from other parts of the engine’s compartment, facilitating cooler air from the side or front of the engine bay.

By: Jon Aragon

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