DIY Warm-Air Intake

[bnmorgan]

I'll shortly be working on an '88 festiva, carb 1.3L as my first project. I noticed that on the intake hat, there is a tube running to the fender, and a smaller metal tube running up to a valve of some sort, the other end attached to a heat shield on the exhaust manifold. If i force this valve to remain open, is that going to give me intake air that is too hot? Is hot air gonna help that much, and how much will it hurt what power there is? 70 mile per day commute through rural Mississippi.

[nubbzcummins]

"Version 1.0, 3-years ago, drew the air from between the heat shield and manifold. IATs were way too high -- 180F in the Winter! The faster warmups were nice, but detonation wasn't. v1.1 moved the tube to its current location, which is far enough away, but never broke 90F. Removing the shield allowed "v1.2" to reach 100-110F on cold days, 140F on 40F+ days (fall is a bit unpredictable). This is in combination with a rad-block and has worked well since."

RH77: Have you tried changing the gap, heat range, type of spark plugs being used to fix the detonation due to high intake temps? I had a supercharger on a toyota tacoma and the discharge temps of the s/c was so hot that it caused detonation that could only be cured with timing adjustment and/or colder heat range plugs. Just an idea.....

[swoody]

I tried this same setup in my Civic, but for some reason it dropped my MPG. I just removed the flexible piping, and now I just have a large hole in the side of my intake where the cool air tube and resonator used to be, and I get much better mileage now. I figure it's pulling in warmer air from the engine bay, but not getting the extremely hot air from the headers. Seems to be a great compromise for my car

[nemesis]

so what kind of gains did you guys get from wai??