Originally Posted by
CoRDiTe
Those cone filters or flat filters doesn't matter. It matters from the material it is made from. If it has a material that allows for better air flow then it will give you better air flow. Just because you have a cone filter doesn't mean it's any better than a flat filter.
Every car I've owned including my trucks stock OEM intake system draws air from the outside. I've never seen a car that draws air from the engine bay except for very old cars. If you follow the intake box(where the filter rests) you will see it is connected to a plastic pipe that draws the air outside through a hole in the bumper. Those so called cold air intakes the kids buy and stick them in their car are only for looks IMO because you are drawing the air from the engine bay. Hot air. You may get more air, but the air won't be any less dense than it is outside. So you aren't really going to burn cooler oxygen.
surface area plays a significant role in how much air a filter passes through, considering the force pulling the air through the filter doesn't change.
A cone shaped filter made out of paper will flow more than a flat panel style paper filter.
The material it is made out of just takes it a step further in increasing the efficiency.
Yes, most stock systems pull air from outside of the car. Usually from in the wheel well.
The difference from the stock set up and an aftermarket set up is that the stock one is very constrictive. That small tube that goes to the wheel well or as you said, in the bumper, doesn't allow much air to flow through it easily. This makes the engine have to work harder just to get the air it needs to run. There are various reasons the manufacturers do this. Combination of eliminating the noise a larger intake makes, to controlling the power curve, to lowering the chance of sucking up things like water.
Originally, aftermarket intakes were supposed to replace those small, restrictive pipes with large, smooth, more free flowing piping.
But people soon realized that, while they were sucking in more air, much more easily, they were pulling in hot air from the engine bay. So the idea of a cold air intake came about. The concept is easy, get it away from the engine heat, and out from behind the hot radiator. For the cars that allowed it, they routed an intake pipe around the radiator. Much like the stock set up is on a 300zx. In other cars, where that wasn't an option, they took the piping and directed it down, to try to get "under" the heat. With proper ducting and shrouding, the hit air from the radiator was being blown above the new intake position. Effectively letting you draw in cooler air.
That is where everything went wrong. The uneducated consumer saw that the intakes down towards the ground made more power, and they wanted it. So for aftermarket companies to make money, they sold what the consumer wanted. The lower they could get the intake, the better people liked it. That is because people didn't realize what was actually happening, but they do know that hot air rises, and therefore, the air down low, must be cooler. And the modern "cold air intake" was born.
So yes, the modern, off the shelf cold air intake is no more effective than any other aftermarket intake. However, even if the aftermarket intake is pulling in hot air from the engine bay, it is still doing it more efficiently than the stock air intake setup was.
The thing to remember is an aftermarket air intake is just freeing up the horsepower that the stock set up was taking away from being restrictive. It can't make the engine produce more power.
That's all an aftermarket intake can do until you start forcing more air into the manifold.
Originally Posted by
CoRDiTe
And everything you just said after sounds like you took it from a txt book and just copied and pasted. Just saying..
Yeah, I get that a lot. I just take it as a compliment