High flow intake design.
High flow intake design.
(OP)
Hi all, I am looking to fabricate a high flow intake for my supercharged e55. i will be using 5" aluminum and rubber tubing. my qyestion is will an in-line cone type air filter work well if it were incased within the tubing itself or will it need to be mounted at the end of the tube. K&N makes some cone type filters that have the diamter to fit snug inside 5" tubing but it has a flat top metal covered top versus another manuf.'s open funnel type design. which type is better? also if the base opening is only 3" inside the pipe will this need to be opened to as close to 5" as possible if i go the incased route?
i saw a movie once where they showed old time gold strip miner's tools. one was a pressure washer (not powered obviously) which sent water down piping with reduced diameter piping along the way until it reached the end where it was blasting water to strip earth. can this principal, if it is one be applied to intake or was this because the weight of the water in the holding tank was creating pressure?
thanks for your expert knowledge.
i saw a movie once where they showed old time gold strip miner's tools. one was a pressure washer (not powered obviously) which sent water down piping with reduced diameter piping along the way until it reached the end where it was blasting water to strip earth. can this principal, if it is one be applied to intake or was this because the weight of the water in the holding tank was creating pressure?
thanks for your expert knowledge.





RE: High flow intake design.
You want to do several things: you want to provide clean cool air to your engine, with as little pressure drop as possible because the only driving force for this airflow is atmospheric pressure - seldom more than 14.7 psi. Therefore, you want to minimize flow losses, which doesn't simply mean bigger pipes: you want smooth transitions from one element of the system to another, without any abrupt changes in diameter. Sudden increases in diameter are as disruptive of the flow as are sudden decreases. Thus, you might well find that for example a smooth 4" diameter system could flow considerably more air than a 5" system with several abrupt changes in it.
Next, you want to draw air from outside the engine compartment! The underhood air is almost always considerably hotter and therefore less dense than outside air. Except sometimes here in Texas...
Then, because your airflow is NOT continuous, but is made up of a series of (rapid) individual pulses, even when you're feeding a supercharger, you want the filtering element surface area to be as large as possible, preferably several times larger than the area of the duct it feeds.
And finally, you may well find your car makes some fairly loud noises when you've installed this new intake, noises of the sort that sound strong and manly at first, but become pretty annoying after the first say 300 or 400 miles. This can be the result of your having created a sort of organ pipe, driven by the engine noise, and can require some diagnostic work with a microphone and frequency analyzer.
Good luck,
- R
RE: High flow intake design.