Cooler air in cylinders equals more, P O W E R Options

[gregrobbins]

At the DE today at Firebird Raceway, there was one very quick 2.0L 914.

I met and talked with the owner John Seymour for awhile. One of the innovations he came up with really looks interesting. Instead of the stock air filter box. he looked for a way to get cooler air into the motor. Study the photo (I have more if you want me to post). He ran a PVC pipe from the TPS to hoses that go down to the J tubes. From there they are connected to the air ducts in the longs and finally, he is pulling air from the opening in front of the windshield. He claims it works like a charm. I don't doubt him, as he is running D-jet and was as quick or quicker than the 2.0L cars that had been converted to carbs.

[jsteele22]

Most of the time an intercooler is used in a turbocharged car, b/c the compression of all that air genereates a lot of heat. Since the compressed air is so much hotter than ambient, its (relatively) easy for the intercooler to extract some of that heat. I would think that on a N/A car, there's not much use in an air/air intercooler, since the air doesn't (shouldn't) get that hot anyway; just make sure to grab the air from some place cool.

Going *below* ambient should also increase power, but it gets down to a question of practicality. ( Actually, part of the boost from nitrous is due to cooling : just like when you let air out of a tire or use a spray can, the nitrous gets cold when you squirt it.)

I haven't heard about dry ice being used. Although it's cheap, safe and easy to get a hold of, the big problem is that its a solid, so its hard to make a good thermal contact with, say, an inlet air pipe. If somebody wanted to mess with something really crazy (i.e. : I'm not saying that its a good idea), you might try mixing dry ice with acetone. This combination forms a slush (like rock salt and ice in the old ice maker) at a temperature of -108 F. So you'd need a container that doesn't leak, doesn't turn brittle at low temp, and allows the CO2 to boil off without exploding. Run your air pipes through there and I'm sure you'll feel some extra oomph, at least until the dry ice is gone.