A friend of mine works at a honda dealer as a tech there. He always said it was not worth getting a CAI over a short ram because it would not make that much of a difference in power. We have seen many dyno plots on both but we wanted to see a difference in Air temps. So here is the test we did and the conclusions.

Test Car: 99 Honda Civic SI
Test Elements: AEM cold air intake VS. Short Ram intake
Outside temps: mid 80's
Question: Will the "Cold Air" intake acutally produce colder air?

Conclusion: We hooked up a PGM tester to his OBDII setup. This PGM tester they have at the dealers are crazy they monitor all kinds of stats including all the normal sensors. This is what we noticed:

AEM CAI: the intake temps were around 84 degrees I believe (This was done months ago I just cannot remember the exact numbers)

AEM Short Ram: The intake temps were about 86 degrees, thats it. A 2 degree difference than the Cold air!

My conclusions: Yes this is only one scenario, but I am sure it would apply to other outside temps. If I ever went back to an N/A setup, I wouldn't spend the extra money for the CAI. I don't think that it makes that much of a difference, plus you save money and don't have to worry about Hydrolocking your engine.

*Hope this information helps those trying to decide whether to go with the CAI or not. Both are quality intakes, so you be the judge for yourself.

 

Was the car moving?

 

And how fast was it moving?

Was the hood closed?

 

Yes, the temps are probably off because I cant remember what they were. We did this last summer but I just decided to post it because people had been asking about it. You get the basic Idea. I will have to find the chart we made so you can see the real temps.

ASAHI:
Normal Driving speeds 50-60


[Modified by DC2R714, 6:44 PM 1/17/2003]

 

we did do both intakes on the same day. I was just saying it has been awhile since we did do it. I'll have to ask him if we can try again while its cold.

 

Temps will be close when moving at highway speeds, it's when stopped that the short ram gets zapped with high intake temps. They'll be 30+ higher on the short ram than on a CAI. This was tested at nauseum on the GTI VR6 list long before I bought my ITR and we concluded short rams were not the hot setup especially if you're drag racing or do lots of stop-n-go driving.

 

Heat Soak...

 

I have a short ram so this makes me feel a bit better


[Modified by NunRacer, 4:18 PM 1/18/2003]

 

I did a test a few years back measuring engine bay temp(where usual filter is) vs. AEM CAI temp(measured by the filter). Done at the same time at the drags with a dual sensor temp guage that saved the highest temp reading on both sensors and there was a big difference in temperature....I'll try and dig up the data...

 

Exactally what I was thinking. For roadracing or autocrossing, a shortram vs. a CAI vs. stock probably aren't too much difference because you have cold air getting into the engine bay and across the header.

But if you want to drag race, or just take off hard from a stoplight, the underhood temp is going to go way up in the 2 minutes or so you're waiting.

Someone should test how hot under the hood is when moving vs. after 2 minutes after stoping at a stoplight.

 

just get comptech