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Ram Air vs K&n with extreme lid


z ya

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It's your choice, 1% power gain /10 degrees farenheit...you could see 40-50 degrees difference in ambient temperature to underhood, let alone the potential pressure advantages. Less advantageous for milder setups perhaps. I agree, most ramair setups I'm not fond of their looks no matter what kind of tubing etc. But I'm thinking of going thru an inner fender or sealed to a modified hood to keep the engine bay area looking relatively minimized.

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You could go with a cowl-type hood that would help lower the underhood temps, especially at speed, and use the K&N as well. I guess it really comes down to aesthetics more than anything else--but 1% per degree really adds up in a hurry, even with 300 or more horsepower.

 

Davy

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Guest Anonymous

Hey Z YA! Let me tell you what I think since I have been thinking the same thing. Use a stock steel or glass hood, install a 69 or 70 mustang scoup directly over aircleaner, use the K&N lid with a air scoup tray. This way you will in effect have a ram air with the K&N lid. The tray seals against hood when you close it. NOt much better appearance but you don't have to plum the hoses. Just install the scoup which look really kickass form the outside.

 

jake

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Do the Ram Air. Hood scoops that face backwards (cowl induction) do NOT "force" air into the air cleaner but instead provide a low pressure zone that allows easier breathing. I'll be installing a ram-air setup on mine eventually as I have no doubt the intake air would be cooler with this setup - it gets HOT under there! Mikelly has done this on his car and a search of the archives should provide you with the parts list that he ordered.

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Guest Anonymous

That is true about backward hood scoups but the mustang one faces foward. it would catch the air and shove it down on top of the air cleaner. With a scoup tray this would in fact produce a slightly raised pressure of air at the carb. (with no plumbing of pipes)

 

 

jake

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I think you'll find that most "scoops" sit so low on the hood that they never get above the boundry layer and won't ever provide positive pressure - short of running a snorkel. They WILL work better than sucking air from underneath the hood though. Not sure how it would look on a Z but check out the Mustang II"Cobra" scoops as they can be easily made to face forward and are easy to mount.

 

A "ram air" setup doesn't require cutting a gaping hole in the hood and can be reversed fairly easily.

 

In the end it really doesn't matter how you do it so long as you get cooler air in there. The "ram air" setup won't pressurize the intake either until you're going some gawd awful speed or have used half the front end of your car as an intake duct icon_biggrin.gif

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Guest Anonymous

Good point about the aero dynamics. I will have to to some looking into that but if the air does go into the scoup somewhat smoothly I would go with it cause it is the shortest route from outside air to inside carb you can get.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, my dad did the ram air set up on his

and it looks and should work trick! He is

using the Ram Air Box out of the back of the hot rod books. He ran 4" round ducting all

the way to and through the grill! I wish I

had a digital cam so I could post some pics.

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The area in front of the windsheild is a hight pressure area. This is why backward facing scoopes work. Ram air doesnt really work at road speed (one of carol smiths bookes goes into this in detail).It does provide cool air which is what we are looking for but the sealed rear facing one is easier to do.

 

Douglas

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Guest Anonymous

The backfacing ones do let quite a bit of heat out though, I have a L88 style cowl and its pretty good at venting if nothing else.

 

I am looking to probably change though, maybe glass, stock type with the 280z style vents, reason being I'm a little tired of looking over it (can't see the top of th right headlight at all) and I want to go to a more stealth look (I got sidetracked, went through the boy racer look, now back to something more subtle.. icon_smile.gif )

 

Very good point on the air scoop Jim, I hadn't really thought about that. But its absolutely true, you'd need to have a tall pro-stock huge scoop to really be effective (duh now I know why they use them... icon_rolleyes.gif ) and even then the hole is so small on em, I donno, mostly to clear the tunnel rams I suspect. As you say the air gets deflected at the front and skips over most of the hood to about mid windshield height.

 

Regards,

 

Lone

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Lone, my hood vents tons of air and is easy to look over - has ZX vents as well. I'm also not sure I believe that air boxes don't work when run up front. i guess we'd need a pressure meter to tell for sure but if there's pressure built up in front of the radiator and whatnot I'd expect it to find it's way up the tubes into the carb. I wouldn't expect to see "boost" in the intake mind you but any work the engine doesn't have to do in order to inhale will increase CFM. This is why the low pressure zone at the base of the windshield works so well as I understand it - I don't think that's a high pressure zone. Anyone else know for sure? Put a tuft in there and I don't think it will move around too much - I've seen leaves on some cars like my RX7 just sit there at speed. Hrm, maybe fun to try with a tuft on the highway icon_biggrin.gif

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Michael might chime in to back me up on this but:

 

The base of the windsheild is a high pressure area. However, the stagnation point in front of the grill is a higher pressure area. So the grill would be a more efficient area to run the Ram Air hose to, but a cowl area hole is not bad either. All you need is ambient pressure anyway, as the power added by ramming air like this is negligible compared to the power gained by the lower temp of the air.

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