Hey guys, thanks for answering all of my questions about the cold air intake for my Prelude. Now I have another question for you. What exactly is the difference between the short ram air intakes, and the cold air intakes(performance wise)? What are everyones opinions on these? The main thing I am concerned with is gas milage increase/change....I have a fairly long commute to school........and power gain/change. What do ya'll think?

 

Short ram intakes just sound good, but they such hot air from the engine bay because the piping stops short and the filter is still under the hood. Cold Air intakes have piping that goes down below the fender, usually beneath the headlight area, and the filter is located just about 10-15 inches from the ground in general, and sucks cold air from outside of the car, giving just slightly better gains than stock. The short ram can actually make your car perform worse because of hot air being sucked into the intake manifold. Hope that helps....

 

Short ram=Low end power
CAI=High end power

 

Is there any problem with the cold air being that close to the ground? I was told that it is still inside the splash shield so there is little chance of getting water in the intake during normal driving. How do you get to the filter to change it out? is it complicated?

 

Like stated before, Short Ram is for low end torque, and CAI is for high end torque. Now the drawbacks are:
Short Ram: Suck in hot air, especially at long idles, i think its like for every ten degree in temp, you lose about 10% of ouput.
CAI: Being closer to the floor, the intake can suck in water very quickly. Devastating you engine. But if you get a AEM CAI and a bypass valve, you can remedy that problem of water suckage.

 

Like always you want your engine to as cold as possible, if a hot engine is ran hard the oil will seperate from cylinder walls and not prove any protection. I'm not saying a short ram intake can produce this much heat into an engine, however ever degree can count...

Other than that I agree w/ everyone else...

 

For the short ram, you can always make heat shields out of aluminum available at a hardware store. That way you make low end power. You'll need one around the filter, and one near the engine (kinda near the throttle body). And you don't have to worry about water getting in the engine (although that's very rare)

 

If it was your car.....a 96 Prelude Si......what would you put in your car?

 

you pay for performance. id go with the AEM CAI, there good, dont conduct heat , plus just dont go rooting in water holes, youll be fine.

 

I don't know if you widen the hole for the CAI on a 4th gen like you do on a 5th, but what I would pick would depend on that, tube diameter, and what kind of driving. If you have equal diameter piping between a Cold air and a short ram, the cold air intake would make more midrange power because it's longer, increasing air velocity. If you have a wide diameter short ram (say 3" piping), with heat shields, you would make more consistent gains throughout the rpm range, even high rpms, but you wouldn't get that spike of power that you get from the cold air. Of course, there are also pipes that taper in at the throttle body(ICEMAN's cold air intake), which generates more air flow velocity, giving you more low end to midrange power.
Here's a link to the post that educated me (somewhat) on intakes if you're interested http://www.hondavision.com/showthrea...&threadid=3956

 

Thanks for posting that link. It should educate a lot of people unsure of the whole deal with intake systems.

 

If you get a chance thank Tuan for that thread, guys.
I appreciate it.

Dezoris.

 

Thanks for directing me to that link....I think its going to answer my questions pretty well.

 

Can someone (admin) please save this topic so others can read it w/o asking this question every other minuter...

 

ur stock set up is already a CAI set up..use a drop in K&N filter for similar results..as for changing the the cone filter on the AEM or Iceman..turn the wheel s all the way to the right and pull back the mud guards to access the filter..u might want to pull away the mud guard under the front bumper guard as well for better access..not a hard thing to do..just a pain in the *** every 30k

 

great link!!! all the info i needed to know..

 

Yeah, big thanks to Tuan. I thought I credited him for it, but looks like an oversight, sorry about that. And I forgot to credit http://www.hondavision.com too. Color me shamefaced.