new hot air intake idea

[malibuguy]

well, i think its new, new to me at least...

install an air-to-water intercooler & just run the engine coolant into the unit to warm the air...

i dunno if its practical or not, but its sounds like a decent idea, & i came up with it trying to fall asleep last night

[Daox]

That would be very doable. However, maybe using something like a heater core may be easier. The hard side to plumb (the coolant) is already done. You just need some rough ducting going to it.

To take it a step farther, you could tweak your intake air temp via a diverter of some sort that goes to cooler air.

[getnpsi]

many cars already have coolant passages in the throttle body. a start would to be to remove the tb and see if you can make them slightly larger. you probably cant get inside the piece to really open it up tho. you might want to see if you can route the lines so they pick up the hotter coolant coming out of the engine rather than stuff that has already been cooled from the radiator. another would to tee off those same lines and put your exchanger there.

i would leave the lines alone and just relocate the air ducting to hotter areas personally

[Tygen1]

I've thought of using an old heater core and diverter box set up from any random car. Most are set up so the diverter is driven off a cable and allows mixing of a cold/outside air source so you can adjust the tempature. That would be nice to tweak your intake air temps to ideal. I'm sure it would be overly complicated, but it would be nice to have that adjustment.

[Shawn D.]

Uhh... just run the air intake to the aft side of the radiator -- no need to add complexity and weight adding another (you guessed it) radiator. Q.E.D.

[Christ]

Buy a small heater core, stick it in the factory air box, before the filter. Guess what? It technically doubles as a prefilter!

Many cars have small-ish heater cores that could be used for this purpose.

Grab the heater valve from an old honda, you can tweak the coolant flow into the heater core w/ a cable, so you can monitor intake temps and adjust as necessary.

[jamesqf]

I'd think the coolant would be a lot slower to warm up than the cat/exhaust manifold.

[Christ]

It would, but coolant flow is easier to contain, and using a heater core in the airbox would keep it looking OEM for those who care about that sort of thing.

[malibuguy]

it was just an idea...its not perfect!

i have my air filter basically on top of my exhaust manifold, & typically i see temps 30-40* higher then ambeint...but i wonder with a hot water core in the intake...would it heat the air little more "thorough" as my temps start to drop a little at speed...more air swirling around under the hood...probably means i need to seal off some stuff...grille blocks can only do so much

[Raysp30]

It's been a few months since I've posted anything. I guess I haven't been quite as enthused about MPG due to the winter and cheaper gas.

I read this post earlier in the week and started thinking about how I could improve on the HAI that I already have in my Saturn. Current set up has all of the airbox and tubing fully insulated and then has extra plumbing (2 or 3 2 inch 90 degree elbows) set up to pull in air from the exhaust manifold. On average this would boost the air temp to 25-40 degrees over ambiant.

Although the idea of a small heater core is really neat, and simple, I thought I'd copy a couple other people and install a heat shield on the end of my tubing to isolate where the heat was being pulled from. Now the only air that can come in is hot. Scanguage has the air temp at 150-160 once the car is warmed up. Big difference in MPG already.

I also have a permanent grill block in place, along with a partial belly pan, so there isn't too much cool air coming into the engine bay. I'll try and post pictures sometime this weekend of the setup.