Ram Air Nets 5.1MPG gain...
 

Ram Air Project



Highly doubt it, that and a 34hp increase. lol

You have be travelling pretty damn fast for ram air to actually do anything

...and/or, vastly OVER rich A/F-ratio from the start!

Obviously Karl doesn't work in the industry... :rolleyes:

Autospeed has done quite a bit in this area. What I like about them is, when they say they tried something and it didn't work, they say it didn't work, instead of pretending that it did as so many do.

"if you stand up to six feet in front of the car and someone slams on the gas in neutral you can feel the pull from the dual intakes. "

What is this on, the Chrysler Turbine Car :p

So did "Ram Air" ever really make it in the mainstream? I can possibly see drag racing, but vehicles like the late 60's Pontiac HO engines and most recently, Pontiac's Grand Am with the Ram Air package is an insult to the buyer. The name implies nothing with anything but the air inlet for looks, IMO.

I haven't read any appreciable forced induction effect by either (especially the Grand Am). All marketing. Having driven the 3400 V-6 Ram Air Grand Am, it certainly did suck. :D

RH77

The <94 Cavalier Z24 had an induction system that ran through the hood, using the hood itself as the intake "piping". The atmospheric vent (inlets) were the scoops that pointed at the windshield.

I have no idea if it made a discernible effect on power/economy. It did make a cool noise at WOT with no filter in, though.

I was a little embarrassed for the guy lol

Hmm. Wonder if that can give a crappy Ford 2.3L an extra kick.

Interesting article. Thanks for posting it!

all injecteds have a bouyancy for error at slow, the ecu makes up for it, the carbs are too close to real time, and cannot be bothered unless full blown supercharge or turbo.

the cram air on injected should always work, unless you exceed the computers dynamics. I believe the claim of gain in mileage and of course hp. The carbs are rocks, it would be a hoax there.

57.9% increase in fuel economy (last paragraph) !

Detroit will be knocking this guy's door down to get the "secret"!

Pete.

yeah there are all these super easy ways that GM could be making their cars get 60mpg, they're just too stupid to figure out stuff that guys in garages with little pvc pipes throw together in one afternoon!

And sure they would sell more cars than anyone else on the planet if they just dusted off all the top secret technology they're obviously sitting on to make cars get 300mpg, but they figure they'll just roll around in bankruptcy land on purpose for giggles.

Ram Air Intake Scoop
 

I installed a ram air intake scoop on my four wheel drive 2004 Toyota Tundra Double Cab a few years back. Changes I recorded:

• 1.5-2 MPG increase depending on driving conditions
• Truck stopped downshifting on hills
• Better passing power from 50 to 90 MPH

The ram air intake scoop gathers and forces somewhere in the area of 11 times more air than the engine can ingest at 70 MPH.

There is a website that claims mounting a ram air intake scoop below the bumper places it in a region of negative pressure or vacuum but this does not hold true for my truck. Using a homemade manometer I recorded 3.5 water inches of pressure in this area running the highway at 70 MPH. The scoop connects directly to the stock air box with a True Flow drop in-filter.

I have never been able to draw (or force) water up into the air box or engine - even in driving through six inches of standing water. I would not have done this deliberately but I was trapped in my lane with nowhere to go.

I had pictures to post but they are too big. I would provide links to the pictures but I have not made five posts yet.

From someone who has fitted a ram air system to a V6 FWD, yep it makes a difference.

And with small displacement motor, and the air only entering through the ram air vents, you damn well better believe you'll feel 300-400CFM being pulled in at WOT. Its pretty close to a small air blower that would be used in a home hvac system...the kind that moves air from your heater throughout your house.

I really hate to ask this.......but the evil spirit in my brain demands it........

WHat 'simple' person would run their vehicle at WOT long enough for it to matter??????

Please........stop.
really.

If you are legitamately here for mpg, why would you care!!!!!????
I have the baddest sedan on this site. V8 w/ 340hp Tons of torgue, 3800 lb curb weight. sub 6 second 0-60 from the factory.
in 230,000 I have been at wot 1 time. And that was to scare the crap uot of my then 17 yr old daughter.

I actually go WOT on occasion. Or full pedal, as it were. Many of the people here are also engine performance enthusiasts. Its a pretty large field of oberst and expertise on this site, and fuel economy is just a common factor between us all, or most of us.

Not sure if you are referring to me or not. At any rate - do you define WOT by zero vacuum or by Throttle Position?

I would like to ask if you have any sets of data or repeatable testing protocols from which we can make our own inferences?

And I'm fairly certain he didn't mean you.

Also - WOT is normally defined as the throttle setting wherein the throttling device poses the least possible (unmodified) restriction to intake flow. Normally, when the skinny pedal is on the deck.

Zero vacuum can be achieved under any throttle setting, and thus, is a function of load, rather than throttle.

Ram air is a misnomer (thank you GM marketing) but a large forward facing intake helped improve FE on 3 cars so far vs the stock intake setup. There is less down shifting involved in normal driving and I can use WOT or near wot in high gear at low RPM more often. The tradeoff is that the airbox accumulates more dirt.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...e/PICT0008.jpg

Every little helps, as they say. But to be of benefit, the air entering the intake must be going fast enough to compare with the rate at which the engine is sucking it in, I feel. And that must equate to 'rather fast' in terms of road speed, although I can't work it out in my head.

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r...150blanket.jpg

Oh look! My F150 came with RAM AIR (just to the left of the radiator cap) from the factory! No wonder it's so freeking awesome! :eek:

Hm.. My 96 had the intake snorkel (big one, for a I6) on the physical left of the radiator, facing out the 3 left most slots of the grille.

I was speaking in general.

But specifically, since your second post made me re-read your first......

:....The ram air intake scoop gathers and forces somewhere in the area of 11 times more air than the engine can ingest at 70 MPH.

help me with this sentence.
1. a-b-a. how much air can the engine igest?
2. does it matter past the MAF/ECU
3.how much air prior the this supercalafradulist scope was installed.

Toyota is not Ford. (and I like ford) Ford allows a lot of room for improvement in the engine design and use. See all the bolt-ons for the 5L & 4.6L mustangs.
Toyota tends to enginnner closer to the limit. I worked for toyota in the early 90's.

I do have data recorded in a spread sheet that needs to be organized. I pulled a trailer (3,000 pound parachute) for my landscaping business and tree service for the first couple of years I owned the truck. I need to better organize it to reflect which miles are pulling a trailer, which are unladen, which are city and which are highway.

I have been doing fuel economy research as it relates to my truck for years. I test devices, theories, aftermarket modifications, and build my own prototypes. I publish my findings on my blog. I believe my protocol is pretty good but am always open to constructive criticism.

My ram air intake scoop is connected directly to the air box and so I would guess the repeatable testing protocol would be to disconnect and run without it which I have done several times. The ram air scoop only provides significant measurable benefit on the highway.

My ram air intake scoop is located below the bumper on the passenger side of my truck. At that location it does tend to collect a lot more grit and debris than would normally be found there. I clean out the air box every couple of thousand miles. I have decided redesign the scoop and move it further up and locate it in the bumper. This should make the feed tube less convoluted and the location in the bumper will be in a higher pressure area. It is my hope that by locating the scoop in the bumper it will accumulate less debris. Although I have never done it I worry about the scoop getting ripped off the bottom of the bumper by a parking curb or road hazard. I have managed to fill it up with snow from cutting through a snow bank.

I agree. I approached this in simple terms of providing more air than the engine draws in.

• My engine is a 4.7 liter V8 which is 285 cubic inches. At 2200 RPM it draws in 313,500 cubic inches (2200 x 285/2).
• My scoop has a face area of 48 inches (4 inches tall x 12 inches wide)
• At 70 MPH the truck moves 73,920 lineal inches per minute (70/60*5280*12)
• 73920 (lineal inches) X 48 (opening of scoop) = 3,548,160 cubic inches
• 3,548,160 (volume of air the scoop gathers at 70 MPH) divided by 313,500 (volume engine consumes at 2200 RPM) = 11.3

I calculated the air consumption by taking the cubic inches (285) and multiplying it against the RPM's (2200) at 70 MPH and dividing by 2 since each piston only draws air every two rotations of the crank. This gave me 313,500 cubic inches.

I do not think that it does. I am not actually pushing 3,548,160 inches of air into the engine - what I am doing is overcoming an intake restriction and keeping pressure in the air box/intake tube/intake plenum. With the first generation Tundra there is a flow restriction in the fender well where the stock air box draws its air from. By doing this I eliminated that restriction.

Under perfect conditions the engine would have only been capable of drawing 313,500 cubic inches of air per minute - but as I explained above it was not possible to operate at 100% efficiency due to the restrictions in the fender.

Not to offend but I highly doubt that there is a real ram air effect, more likely what you are experiencing is a less restrictive intake since there is now more area to pipe in the air and cooler temps allowing for more power.

To start the calculation using my car a 3.8l V6 @ 2000rpm consumes about 67CFM assuming 50% VE. For a straight Flexable 3inch pipe to flow 67CFM the velocity of the air in the pipe would need to be 1364.91fpm (Air Duct Calculator - EfficientComfort.net) or the speed of the air needs to be 930.62mph. Even if the speed of air is 11 times faster than the speed of the car I would need to be moving 84.5MPH.

<s>Your truck</s> The 2.2l car in the first post at 2000rpm 50% VE uses 39CFM with the velocity needing to be 794.5 fpm or moving at 541.7MPH going by the 11 again (highly doubt the air would be moving that much faster than the car) the speed needed is 49.25MPH.

One thing that is not included in my calculations is the extra restriction produced from bends in the pipe see ZZ Performance

Anything over atmospheric would be helpful, actually, even if not a positive boost. Think about turbo applications... If you start at 14 inches of vacuum, the turbo is working through all that vacuum before applying boost. Even if it never makes it into positive pressure, its still lowering the negative pressure in the intake tract, thus reducing pumping losses in the intake. Same theory for ram air, in reality. Doesn't require measurable positive pressure, only a decrease in negative pressure.

! Fixed a bunch of mistakes that swype made. !

Thats why I said ram air is a misnomer. Most stock intakes are designed to reduce noise and prevent dirt and water ingestion first and foremost at the expense of some fuel economy and power. Theres plenty of information on how to modify the intake here.
Reducing intake flow restriction to the absolute bare minimum
If you do a search you'll find a bunch of intake articles using several different vehicles.

No offense taken but I have to say that I do not think we are talking about the same principle here. The scoop, at highway speeds, gathers and forces more air into the air box than the engine is consuming which, by definition, is ram air. I guess in order to put this to rest I will hook up my manometer to the air box and record the pressure increase. And again, I am talking about air volume and not velocity. Pressure increase indicates more air entering the air intake than is being drawn into the engine.

Again, I disagree. I never said anything about air speed but rather air volume

Additionally, you state above that your car is a 3.8 liter engine and consumes 67CFM at 2000 RPM and then state below that my 4.7 liter engine consumes 39 CFM at 2000 RPM. Nope. Sorry.


I believe your numbers are off a bit here:

• At 2000 RPM (I quoted 2200 RPM at 70 MPH but I digress) the engine would consume (285 X 2000 X .5) 285,000 cubic inches. There are 1728 cubic inches in a cubic foot so (285,000 / 1728) = 164.9 cubic feet.

• 794.5 fpm is a little over six and a half miles per hour.

Maybe I am not explaining this clearly enough. The ram air intake scoop has a frontal opening of 48 inches and converges at the rear where it connects to a flexible aluminum tube that is plumbed directly into the air box. Because of the direct connect the air box, at highway speeds, becomes pressurized because more air is gathered and directed to the air box and intake than the engine can consume. This is not theoretical formulas but empirical data.

I attempted to post pictures but apparently they are too big. Pictures and articles can be viewed here.

Just what is the principle? :confused:

You've been concerned about fuel use your whole life... and you drive around in a pickup. It gets what mpg exactly? :confused:

Here ya go:

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r...er/unicorn.jpg

The principle is the amount of air per minute the scoop gathers at a given rate of travel versus the amount of air the engine consumes at a given RPM. Phantom offered that the improvement was based on cooler air and reduced restriction. I contend that, while it does draw cooler air with less restriction, the defining (ram) aspect is the extra air rammed into the air box which lends the most improvement. Even if someone wants to put it in terms of velocity the numbers given by phantom are incorrect. It does not make him a bad person nor do I feel a need to respond to him with sarcasm

"You've been concerned about fuel use your whole life... and you drive around in a pickup. "

or unicorn pictures. I am fairly certain he can speak for himself and I look forward to his response as I may learn something about how he approaches or views this modification.

I owned and operated a landscaping company and tree service for years. The truck was necessary for my business pulling trailers and carrying materials. It also carried my family for local trips and vacations.

Initially my truck was among the worst in fuel economy and therefore a prime candidate for improvement. 14 MPG AVG on the highway when I first got it. Currently running the highway at 65 MPH I average (for the highway portion) 20 MPG. Overall mileage from last year was 17.5 MPG which includes all types of driving.

It bears worth noting that I have done several modifications to my truck and the improvement is not a result of the ram air intake scoop alone.

That's it! The unicorn is proof that my air intake scoop does not work. Thanks for clearing the air on that one.

I'm curious as to the principle of operation here. Assuming you really are pressurizing your intake, how would that translate to improved mpg?

Your title of this thread is completely inaccurate, you don't have any credibility as a result. "Ram Air Nets 5.1MPG gain"

I looked at lizard's blog... when I saw the glowing report on how the Fitch catalyst really works well, and the link to Pure Energy Systems (which should be named Pure BS Systems) I almost closed that window right then. But, I looked around a little more... there is no cohesive fuel log but most posts showed 14-15 mpg. You are losing to a V8 4x4 that only gets used for towing or hauling, pal. :rolleyes:

Your testing is bunk and most of those theories and conclusions are too. What are you getting outta this? :confused:

When I originally said your truck I was thinking of the car in the first post was you sorry about that and you are correct on my calculations I believe what I did was read FPM as FPS when doing the calculations.

As you do more testing you should move the manometer into the intake tube two inches or so that way you will see the pressure that in making it into the tube and not the pressure that is trying to make it in to a smaller tube.

I am not the thread originator. Learn to read.

It seems to me that there is work involved in an engine sucking in air and if the forward motion of the vehicle can instead feed the engine air then there should be an efficiency gain. It should make the intake stroke just a little bit easier if nothing else.

Yes, the theory is sound. The question is whether or not this particular execution of that theory is actually effective.

Cowl induction is another way of increasing the pressure of the intake air. But instead of sticking a pipe into the wind, you tap into the positive pressure bubble at the base of the windshield.

Highwaylizard: you seem to have the time and cash to try out lots of different gadgets. Maybe you could purchase a vacuum / boost gauge, and install in into your intake pipe, and record the results. If it goes hyperbaric, then you have your proof. If not, then you know you're wasting your time.