What is the difference between a cool air intake and a short ram air? Is one more beneficial than the other? Also, if I want to improve the gas mileage on my car and add a little horsepower, is it better to upgrade the intake, or the exhaust system first? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

Cold air intakes (CAI's) place the filter in the wheel well. This enables the engine to breath colder air.


Short rams are just a tube and filter that place the filter inside the engine bay, but as far away from the engine as possible.

 

Instead of creating a new posts I also have a question on the intake subject. I use to have a ZC, made my own CAI intake out of 2 1/4" mandrel bends. I ended up just running it as a short ram, now I have a B16 and the 2 1/4" seems to small for it. What size piping should I run, I'm going to the track on Tuesday and don't want my 2 1/4" to be holding me back, would a temporary PVC setup be that bad to do? It would only be used for my 3 runs.

 

What size is your throttle body opening? As long as the intake is equal or larger diameter it shouldn't be much of a flow restriction. If it's only for 3 runs or so you may as well use a short ram with the filter just stuck off the intake manifold.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by beta13 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Instead of creating a new posts I also have a question on the intake subject. I use to have a ZC, made my own CAI intake out of 2 1/4" mandrel bends. I ended up just running it as a short ram, now I have a B16 and the 2 1/4" seems to small for it. What size piping should I run, I'm going to the track on Tuesday and don't want my 2 1/4" to be holding me back, would a temporary PVC setup be that bad to do? It would only be used for my 3 runs.</TD></TR></TABLE>

For the track, bring a bag of ice to place on the intake manfiold between runs (with the engine off) and just place the filter on the end of the throttle body.

 

I dont know the stock b16 throttle body opening size but I'm fairly positive that it's bigger then 2 1/4", I'm guessing it's around 2 1/2".

 

stock 1st gen b16a throttlebody is 58mm. or approx 2.28346inches.