warm/cold air intake, something thant made me think a bit. Options

[4-eyed-freek]

hey everyone! im a current student at UTI in chicago and last week my brakes teacher was lecturing on how stupid cold air intakes we and he kept calling them a warm air intakes, and he is right in a way..... BUT this week i started my basic engines class and my new teacher couldnt stress the inportance of a cai on a car because...(THIS IS WHAT HE SAID) if you think about it, your engine is running at somewhere around 212 in most cars. so the 100+ degree temp in your enigine bay that your cold air intake is taking in is actually colder than your internal engine thus meaning that the really warm air in you engine bay is actually cold air for your car.. so who is right?!?!?! i thought about this to myself and talked it over with other kids in the class and i got so many diff. answers. lets here what you guys think.

[richee3]

They are both right. They're both talking about two similar but different intakes. A short ram intake has the upside of being able to suck air in more freely than the factory intake, but it's warmer air than the factory intake. A cold air intake sucks more air in than the factory intake, but it's also getting cooler air than a SRI, so it's getting slight power gains. However, without a full exhaust setup, neither type of intake is going to give you big gains.

Short ram intake- Upside is that it sucks more air in than the factory box. More air = more power. However, it's sucking in warmer air from the engine. Cold air is more dense, so a CAI can suck more air in. Plus colder air is better when the air/fuel mixture combusts.

Cold air intake- The upside is that it flows better than a factory box, and that it sucks in similar air temperatures as the factory box rather than warm air from the engine. The downside is that the piping length is much longer, and as 350niZmo mentioned, hydrolock is always a concern.