I don't know about you guys, but its been cold here lately. As I type, its about 5F and dropping for the night. This brings about a certain problem with driving more efficiently, your car doesn't heat up as quickly as it used to. In fact, on my 21 mile drive to work, even with my full grill block and highway driving, the Paseo never even gets warm enough to open the thermostat most of the time.
So, this has got me thinking. Everyone claims that even if their WAI doesn't give them better mileage, it at least helps warm up times. I thought that sounds great for my heat problem, so I decided to do some testing.
I did three different tests. The first test was setup #1. It is what I have been running. It keeps the intake air a bit warmer than ambient (remember I have a full grill block that helps). Setup #2 was a simple flexible aluminum duct run up close to the exhaust manifold. Setup #3 was that same duct slightly repositioned, but with aluminum foil around it as a shroud in an attempt to scavenge more heat off the manifold. Pictures are below:
Setup 1:
Setup 2:
Setup 3:
The test was simple, idle the engine for 10 minutes (long warm up time, I know, I'd be at least 1/3 the way to work by then) and log intake temperature and coolant temperature every 30 seconds. This is what resulted.
As you can see, setup #2 (WAI 1 on the chart) was pretty much useless as a wai, it didn't heat the air noticeably at all. The coolant curve between setup 1 & 2 is nearly identical. My reasoning for #2 being somewhat slower to heat up is a very slight breeze outside. Setup 3 was done in the garage with the door open to correct this mistake.
I talked it over with Darin and he suggested the foil option. I just tested that setup (3) tonight. It was much colder starting out (15F vs 31F), but you can see the intake air did warm up. However, it really didn't have a noticeable effect on coolant temperature even after 10 minutes of idling! Again, the curve is nearly identical to the other two.
So, I am still trying to decide if there is a way to make an even warmer WAI, or if it is useless. I'm thinking, if I make it much warmer, it might help with warm up a tiny bit, but once the engine is up to temp the intake air is going to be scorching hot and may harm mileage. I think its at least semi-safe to say that WAIs don't really help with warm up times all that much, at least on this car.