2010 Honda Insight Intake: Ram air or just coincidence?

[SVOboy]

I was looking at this at the show and wondering if the design of this intake was to take advantage of air pressure or just to have a short pipe going up over the radiator.

[beatr911]

It's definitely not 'ram' air as a true ram system is in a sealed off area that contains pressure. It's just in front of, and therefore colder than what is in back of the radiator. Easy packaging also.

[beatr911]

Also with a true ram system it really just gets cold air until you get over about 100 mph. Even then it's not much of a boost. .5 psi at 100mph maybe? At least it's free.

[Frank Lee]

That's nothing new. My '94 F150 has virtually the same thing and I'm sure those have been around longer than that.

Likely not much for ram air action going on there. I think the biggies would be cool air intake, and it's a nice "clean" location i.e. it's enough of a pressure zone, high up, and ahead of what the tires kick up, to stay out of more moisture and dust. The F150 is the one I've bragged about where I finally changed the factory air filter out at 12 years old and 80,000 miles, not because I had to (it still looked clean) but out of sheer guilt.

[theunchosen]

Thats only going to be considered ram air if you can get it over 600 mph. . .then any opening facing forward is considered ram air ^_^

[ConnClark]

Regardless of what you may have just read, Ram air has a real effect even at 65 to 70 mph. I calculated it out once for my Mercedes and cam up with a figure of ram air increasing power output of my engine by at least 1/3 of a hp at 70mph. Since my car is a diesel that more than 1/3 of a hp came at no expense of fuel consumption.

With a gas powered car your mileage may vary but it should be a positive effect.

[theunchosen]

Originally Posted by ConnClark

Regardless of what you may have just read, Ram air has a real effect even at 65 to 70 mph. I calculated it out once for my Mercedes and cam up with a figure of ram air increasing power output of my engine by at least 1/3 of a hp at 70mph. Since my car is a diesel that more than 1/3 of a hp came at no expense of fuel consumption.

With a gas powered car your mileage may vary but it should be a positive effect.

only a third?

Stick your hand out the window at 70. substantial bit of power. If its much bigger than your hand at 70 mph your creating some pretty substantial pressure.

Ford Turino, ram air intake. In 2nd the ram air will snap open above 3,000 rpm(not on a dyno because the air is not moving) and its not very noticeable. Someone made the comment that it didn't affect the performance so my friend(much older than I) locked the intake to a pull pin on a string. in 4rth he yanked the pin at 2K rpm and it felt for all intents and purposes like he switched on a supercharger and crushed me into my seat.

I originally made the comment about 600 mph because the inlet is very small and it doesn't have any "ram-scoop" geometry. Its an opening with a more or less flat face and straight back tubing.

But at 600 mph you don't need any special geometry so long as its facing the direction of motion.

P.S. if you don't believe in ram air look up Scram jets. (Jet engine with massive ram scoop)

[MetroMPG]

I didn't know this before today, but apparently the original Insight had an excellent low-restriction OEM intake - better than average.

Julian at AutoSpeed modified his, to make it look suspiciously like this 2nd gen Insight.

He said, after his mod:

And, even better, in any constant throttle cruise over 40 km/h, there was in fact a positive pressure on the throttle side of the airfilter. ...

To put this another way, in cruise conditions the intake system is now posing less than zero restriction, and even at maximum flow, the throttle is seeing 99.5 per cent of atmospheric pressure.

Source: Autospeed


Julian's Insight:

[ConnClark]

Originally Posted by theunchosen

only a third?

At least a third , but thats with no additional fuel being burned.

Stick your hand out the window at 70. substantial bit of power. If its much bigger than your hand at 70 mph your creating some pretty substantial pressure.

Actually the pressure remains the same regardless of the size of the object moving through the air. The force increases as area increases but pressure remains the same. Look up static and dynamic pressure.

Ford Turino, ram air intake. In 2nd the ram air will snap open above 3,000 rpm(not on a dyno because the air is not moving) and its not very noticeable. Someone made the comment that it didn't affect the performance so my friend(much older than I) locked the intake to a pull pin on a string. in 4rth he yanked the pin at 2K rpm and it felt for all intents and purposes like he switched on a supercharger and crushed me into my seat.

I originally made the comment about 600 mph because the inlet is very small and it doesn't have any "ram-scoop" geometry. Its an opening with a more or less flat face and straight back tubing.

It utilizes the whole grill of the car as a scoop. As long as the air slows down before the inlet pressure will build.

[theunchosen]

are you referring to the insight or the turino? about using the whole grill as a scoop? or your car? the OP picture definitely does not look to use the whol grill as a scoop, and this particular Turino had a maybe foot by one and a half inch scoop that taperedback over a foot to half that.

I was referring to the same amount of pressure that builds up on your hand. The Insight's intake will be able to take advantage of that but it will not have much more force and equally boost pressure in the intake(the pressure in the intake can be greater if the ram scoop is a diffuser or has similar geometry, in which case the pressure would be greater than that experienced by your hand as would the force.) If you wanted to go Ram air on it you wouldn't have much trouble just attach a funnel to the front of the air intake(might further assist in keeping engine debris/dust out by moving it closer to "fresh" air).

If you created a diffuser ram air intake you might not lose out on lean burn because the air is going to heat up as it compresses. At reasonable speeds the temperature of the intake air might rise one degree, allowing your engine to get more air readily and allowing you to have WAI(depending on how big your diffuser cone is).