Cold Air Intake Vs Pod Filter  

cold air intake is just a pod/pannel filter with either a cold air feed to it (sitting in the engine bay) or a intake pipe running down to the wheel arch or front bar with a pod/filter on the end.

there is no point in having a short pipe with a pod sitting in the engine bay sucking in hot air - cold air is denser air, meaning there is more oxygen in the air which therefore increases your power producing levels..

theres a quick lesson for you..

26th December 2006 - 06:37 AM  Reply  Quote

Simply put - they're two different 'parts'.

The pod filter is just that, a (usually) conical filter that replaces your factory airbox that uses a panel (flat) filter. Theory behind it is that a pod filter has greater surface area and can allow more air in etc

A cold air intake, is once again, what it's name suggests. Usually a simple pipe that runs from a location behind the front bar (or similar) where it gets direct airflow. The other end of this pipe is then fed up to the airbox/pod filter, therefore allowing the engine to be sucking in nice cold air.

When doing simple mods like working on your intake system, your goal is to open up the system to allow more airflow. However, simply whacking on a pod filter and leaving it exposed can actually yield worse results than the stock system, however restrictive it may have been. This is because the filter is exposed to the hot air in the engine bay, and will be sucking this through. I won't go into the physics of air density and it's effect on the engine, but take it that hot air = bad.

The better idea is to either replace the airbox with a pod filter, and enclose it with a heat shield, usually a metal box that can shield it from the hot engine bay air. One step better (ie. the best step), is to introduce the cold air intake as outlined above.

Your other alternative to that is to use your factory airbox and replace the stock panel filter with a high flow item from K&N. Then simply cut a hole in the box and feed the CAI pipe into it. It won't be as bling as a fooly sik pod, but it's a lot easier (no need to make mounting brackets or worry about heat shields) and it looks neater because it is stock.

It won't give you "ZOMGZ horsiepower increazezzz" effect, but can give you a few extra kws, and usually a more defined throttle response.

Having said all of that, really the 'ultimate' setup would be to remove as much restriction prior to the throttle body by increase the size of the intake piping, but 8 out of 10 times, the air flow meter is a biggest restriction, and not the easiest or cheapest thing to change or remove.

ROCK ON
R~R

26th December 2006 - 03:54 PM  Reply  Quote

Cut a hole (3-4 inches) in the bottom of the factory airbox, then go to your local plumbing shop and get some pvc pipe and some bends, and make your own induct pipe. I've tryed the pod and the filter changes, this is the best result ive found so far.

As for the strips, they should only be held on with double sided tape, but they may also have sikaflex on them.

If its just tape, peel them off and use prepsol to remove the tape and residue, if its got sikaflex( a black glue) you've got no hope of removing them without having to paint the panels. Sikaflex is good shit that wont come off.

27th December 2006 - 03:47 AM  Reply  Quote

cheers guys!! thanks for the heads up. 'preciate it! *pulls out a hammer* el kabong time hopefully no sikaflex!

27th December 2006 - 04:23 AM  Reply  Quote

Bah - I don't know how many times I rewrote and mixed and matched parts of that post

Besides...error...what error?

ROCK ON
R~R

27th December 2006 - 05:03 AM  Reply  Quote

Think of a hot air balloon. It rises as the hotter air is less dense than the surrounding ambient air but still occupies the same space. In your engine you want colder, more dense air so you can use more oxygen in it to burn with more fuel to create more bang! As rookie ROX said, its not going to give you a huge amount of extra horsepower and this makes sense if you think about how large a hot air balloon is and how much hot, less dense air it must take to lift the gondola and passengers.

29th December 2006 - 02:01 AM  Reply  Quote

i believe i have read somewhere (of course never tested) that there is a formula, if you decrease the intake temp by this much it rasies hp by this much...cannot remember the excat numbers, just thought i would throw it out there.

29th December 2006 - 02:54 PM  Reply  Quote