watching a speed report on h.p. gains. gail banks claims 1% h.p. gain for every 10 degrees cooler. i'd have to guess with a cold air intake to outside air and insulating the intake runners so they dont heat sink you could see relitively good gain. just wondering...

Look at the HP gains with a cold air intake system.

Cold air intake nets results. Insulating the runners? Not so much because the air moves through there so fast it's not going to pick up a lot of heat in that short section.

Hmmm. But there's another thread that comes to mind if you want to hash that one out.....

On the race car, I used to wrap the exhaust headers and intake manifolds. Also ran a cold air intake. Only problem was with the headers ....over time, the heat would crystallize the metal (can you say cracks?)

Then there's the story of the "Ice Man". He used dry ice to cool his intake air ... finally figured out that it wasn't a great idea when his car wouldn't start on the pre-grid due to the Carbon Dioxide being sucked in ....

http://members.rennlist.com/demick/coldair.html

Nice!

Hmmmm, about 60 hrs left until the next AX this weekend. Will I have built one by then?
I don't want to cut up my nice 1.7 air filter holder....but I could plumb the extensions onto the existing holes with a little thought and ingenuity.

Finally, 914 parts that won't become NLA...

Dang you beat me to posting your site link

Time to fab an intercooler that sits right in front of the fan?

Just take a bag of ice and set on your engine before you make your a/x run.

At Lone Pine this year there was a guy doing that, although it was his intercooler on a WRX...

For autocross and other short runs, you could use an air-water intercooler and get a decent sized cooler full of ice water, or maybe liquid nitrogen. If you could get the air down to liquid nitrogen temps, you would be dropping lets say 400 degrees from normal 80 degree daytime temps. 400 degrees would give you a 40% boost in HP according to the figure quoted

Of course your intake manifold would need to be made out of some very very thick stainless steel. There might be other problems too....

-Tony

I was only half joking. I've thought putting ice on the engine of my car but on a T-IV the ice really needs to be on the heads to help cool things. With dual carbs and short manifolds I don't have much room to pack the manifolds with ice. And the sheetmetal keeps the ice from really getting to the heads.

Paul: If you used ice to cool your motor before a race wouldn't that make it a water cooled engine?

Watch what you say there, Tony.

Here's a fundamental problem with the liquid nitrogen idea. If you get the intake air down to liquid nitrogen temps, then the nitrogen will be (at least in part) liquid
Besides, if you were going to bother with that kind of hassle, I would say just go liquid O2 + H2 = fun
Of course that presents the problem of control...

I believe there's a company that makes an interesting 'cold air intake' unit that has a very cold liquid run through a teardrop-shaped object that sits in the intake. Not sure what it uses but it's got little recharge kits.

Brando: I bet if you couple that with one of those 'fan' style electric turbochargers, an oil filter cooler, magnets, and a turbonator intake air swirling device you could get an extra 2 hp

Oh and lets not forget that tiny bottle of octane booster from Pep Boys.

Tony: You forgot a shitload of stickers!

If any sort of cold-air intake system could be used... I'd say a big ass intercooler under the decklid, or a decent sized one right in front of the cooling fan.

Funny story about dry ice and autocrossing...

A friend of mine who was a very good driver in a very well prepared car had an idea. He knew that if he cooled his intake charge, either fuel or air or both that it would be more densely packed molecules and therefore more molecules. He bought a display battery from Sears. These are just the plastic box without the lead cells. But he discovered that the posts were the same as a normal battery. So, he located a motorcycle battery in the interior behind his passenger seat and ran cables to his fake battery. Then he ran cables from the fake battery to ground and the starter. Inside his fake battery, he installed an old device I haven't seen in years called a Cool Can or Kool Kan, i do not recall the brand spelling. he plumbed his fuel in and out through the bottom of the battery. Then he would just pack the can with dry ice before an event. Dry ice evaporates so as long as you keep it sealed it stays frozen and does the deed you ask of it.
I suppose he got a HP or two that he didn't need as he was quite fast in anything he drove.
One event he let his mechanic drive. The guy was kind of a "good old boy" type who was in to Nascar. In the morning we had rain and in the afternoon the sun came out and dried the track. The event was on an oval track that ran the usual mini stock and demo derby crap on the weekend nights... Well our mechanic lost control on the sandy surface left when the rain dried up. He kept his foot into it because that is what the Nascar boys did according to him. He went pretty much full force into the wall making fiberglass feathers out of a nicely restored TVR 2500M front end. As the guys gathered around the wreck and determined that the mechanic / driver was OK. someone noticed a smoke like haze coming from the battery. They started calling for the fire extinguisher. My friend made quick arrangements for a trailer to haul the car out of there before someone could find his illegal modification and attribute all of his winning to it.

My guess? One and a half maybe two HP. More trouble than it is worth...

I would have thought the frost on the sides of the battery would have been a dead giveaway something wasn't quite right.........

For insulting your intake try this:

"You have little tits and you smell bad!"

Nope, frost was on the outside of the can which was inside of the battery case. Nothing to see... The guy races a Super7 now. Not sure what tricks he hides in it.