Tricked-Out-Toy

iTrader: (1)

Ok so heres the deal, With my LT1 in and dual batteries I cant run my intake through the fender, Nor do I really want to. I really like the uniformity of the stock style snorkel but I know its got to be hurting me.

So I had two Ideas. 1 Would be a completely new snorkel set up using sheet metal or thing gauge aluminum tig welded together utlizing the routing from the TPI snorkel BUT be larger to accommodate the increase air flow. The question is tho how much free area do I need through the intake tract to feed a 400+ hp engine? I see alot of guys using 3" piping and having great results but since the air through the snorkel wouldnt be traveling in that straight of a line more volume is required.

2nd Idea would be to keep the stock snorkel but after the hard plastic snorkel but before the MAF install a 3" "T" section that would go straight down to a filter section near the lower air dam. This section would basicly use to two different sources of air one from under the car as well as one from the stock snorkel. anyone have any reason why this wouldnt work? the way I was looking at it, I would have more available air with less pressure loss due to the fact that there is two sources.

Vader

In theory, you will need to provide at least 7.036 inē of intake area in order for the intake tract to equal the cross-sectional area of the 3" tube feeding the throttle body. Oddly enough, a stock 48mm throttle body has only 4.67 inē of free area, a 52mm throttle body has 5.56 inē, and a 58mm TB has 7.05 inē of free flow area.

Tricked-Out-Toy

iTrader: (1)

Well Im running a 58mm Holley so Ill look into using the 7.in^2 BUT that number would only be accurate for next to zero head loss right? by adding bends and flattening out the "duct" so to speak, we are increasing the pressure loss through the lenght of snorkel. How the hell do I calculate that considering the shape. Im guessing I would just use the free area through the smallest section of "duct" and then extrapolate that through the two or three air flow direction changes. This makes my head hurt. Im starting to lean heavily on option 2 for the moment and then put in some serious time into figuring the flow characteristics through the funny shaped snorkel.

Gramps

iTrader: (1)

well that stock snorkel looks like i may have an opening of 1" x5" . well thats 5in^2 on both sides, so your potentially using 10in^2, more than enough air for your 3" round tube.

PS: vader where did you get the 7.036in^2 number? when i use my calculator, the 58mm tb has 7.174in^2, the 3" intake hose has 9.42in^2

EDIT: if you bend it, so long as its not restricted to less than 2.5" (max airflow needed for your 58mm TB) and there are no edges in there from splicing pieces together, the less turbulence the better. and same thing goes with flattening the intake, so long as its more than 7.2in^2 on the inside, then your ok. remember, the thing restricting your airflow here is the throddlebody, so theres no point having some 6" cold air intake hose and ram air hood that can flow over 2000cfm and your TB can only flow like 600cfm (<<<made up numbers, point is still made).

Tricked-Out-Toy

iTrader: (1)

I agree that its pointless to supply more than what you can take in. BUt the stock snorkel already has more volume than a 3" round tube yet is proven to restict the engine and loose HP. So its not just a simple free area calculation. I believe the restriction is due to friction loss at the narrow passage over the radiator bar. when the air transitions over this section it seems to loose velocity which in turn reduces the volume pulled into the engine. I know someone out there did a back to back dyno pull with the stock snorkel and a homemade cold air setup that pulled air from the fender well and gained like 15-17hp. those kind of numbers make me believe that the air is getting trapped in there somewere and im betting its at the higher RPMS were the turbulance inside the plenum area cant keep up with the demand.

SO enough of the rambling, we can prove that the free area in the stock snorkel is slightly more that a 3" pipe yet flows less. How do I set up the equation to figure out the free area required to flow as well as a 3" pipe?

Could we use a flow bench to measure the difference between the two and then with the ratio detemine how much more free area is required inside the snorkel?

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

WHO has proven it’s a restriction? Every flow and dyno test that I’ve ever seen has shown it to be better flowing then most of the aftermarket cold air intake setups available for the firebirds. If there is a restriction, it’s not the actual snorkel, but the filter housings/filter.

Tricked-Out-Toy

iTrader: (1)

Well I cant say tehre is to many ppl but I did read it in more than one place.

heres a post about the 2nd one down where the guy is loosing 5-7 hp on the dyno.
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tpi/...+cold+air+dyno

Heres the same guy but with another person confirming the lose of 7hp
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tpi/...+cold+air+dyno


And I found this great post by MikeH about 3 posts down showing a disected TPI snorkel necking down to 2-5/8"
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/ltx-...+cold+air+dyno

Does anyone have max HP numbers for the stock snorkel? I dont want this to be a guessing game....

Vader

I get 1.124inē of space wasted by the quarter-inch throttle shaft (total for both bores). I probably rounded some of the calculations, but it should be close.

The number for the 3" tube was considering a plain 3" I.D. piece of tubing. 3" diameter provides 7.068 inē of cross-sectional area (pi * rē).

Actually, looking at the photo better, it might be less than that. If the MAF is a stock LT1 74mm unit (smallest diameter - They taper inward even though they measure almost 78mm I.D. at the ends) the area will only be about 6.4inē after subtracting the MAF internals.

Still, restriction tends to be additive, and reducing restriction can certainly help. Those are also "raw" numbers and don't consider laminar flow, peripheral/edge friction, and friction from bends. Obviously, a less round duct is going to present more peripheral frictional loss, so the 5 x 1 intakes are probably not flowing as well as 10 inē of round duct.

And none of this takes into account the filter restriction, but filters are a necessary evil. All we can do is provide enough area to minimize restriction.

Gramps

iTrader: (1)

lol looks like its time to bring in an expert...lol everybodys gonna argue when it comes to CAI setups. personally i like the setup of the stock intake, and since i have a camaro i dont have too many options with my stock hood. i think that sucking air out in front of the rad is better than sucking air from inside the engine bay.

83 Crossfire TA

iTrader: (2)

Why do you say that you don’t have that many options?

Camaros have a higher hood line then firebirds so anything that will fit a firebird will fit a camaro, but not vice versa. Hate the camaro setup or not, once you address where it’s drawing air from it works well enough that all the aftermarket setups were designed with firebirds in mind because the camaro setup works well enough that they didn’t think there was a market for it (AZS&M, SLP, Lingenfelter…)

tpi355

Don't mean to interupt your thead, but I would like to tell U what I did to my snorkel. I took the bottom water baffles and sawwed them off, so there is just a square opening, then cut pieces of diamond plate aluminum and bent flanges on all four sides to cover the holes. then I went to my local hardware store and got two 3 1/2" theaded PVC pipe adapters that were theaded on one side and straight smooth flange on the other side, as to slip on the filters. Then I plasma cut holes in the dia. plate covers just big enough to thead in the pvc adapters, and sealed up the inside with 3M 560 siliconized polyuerathane adhesive. Then got two 3 1/2" x 6 1/2" universal air filters at summit racing and clamped them on the bottom. Cut the paper out of your stock air filter so you can use them as gaskets for in between the snorkel and the baffle tray. The filters just hang low enough you can see them through the fog light holes if u get down and look up in there, so they should get plenty of fresh air, now all I need is some outerwears for the filters and its done. Sorry I dont have any pics now put I could probably get some in the future. Its not a hard mod to do so I dont think u would need them anyhow. Just thought this may be of interest to you or anybody else.

Tricked-Out-Toy

iTrader: (1)

Im really gonna need some pic to visualize it. from what I read you got rid of the square flat filters and went with a cone filter mated to pvc through a plate over the area where the stock square filters went?

tpi355

Well, you kinda got my idea, but I got rid of the water baffles under the stock filters. There is enough depth to the baffles that you can cut them out and still have enough area around each side to attach a mounting plate that sits lower than where the stock filters were. I would image you could use the stock filter flanges for this also, the result would be that your filters would be up inside farther from the fog light recesses on the front of the car, witch probably woulnd't hurt anything. I did it the way I did because I wanted the filters to catch as much cold air as possible. I'll try to get some pics soon, I dont have a digital cam. yet. I dont even know if this will increase your airflow, as I think thats your goal, but gettin rid of those water baffles and flat filters has to help out somehow. I was goin to put an oval K&N on the thottle body, I have speed denity, but my buddy blurted out this idea, and I took it from there, its gotta be better than sucking in hot air from the motor. I just built it out of scrap metal laying around the garage. total cost was 50.00 for the filters and under 10.00 for the two pvc fittings. You got my general idea, just use your imagination and come up with something that'll work good. Whether it'll increase your airflow, from your current setup I don't know. Maybe input from other people would help.

tpi355

Well, you kinda got my idea, but I got rid of the water baffles under the stock filters. There is enough depth to the baffles that you can cut them out and still have enough area around each side to attach a mounting plate that sits lower than where the stock filters were. I would image you could use the stock filter flanges for this also, the result would be that your filters would be up inside farther from the fog light recesses on the front of the car, witch probably woulnd't hurt anything. I did it the way I did because I wanted the filters to catch as much cold air as possible. I'll try to get some pics soon, I dont have a digital cam. yet. I dont even know if this will increase your airflow, as I think thats your goal, but gettin rid of those water baffles and flat filters has to help out somehow. I was goin to put an oval K&N on the thottle body, I have speed denity, but my buddy blurted out this idea, and I took it from there, its gotta be better than sucking in hot air from the motor. I just built it out of scrap metal laying around the garage. total cost was 50.00 for the filters and under 10.00 for the two pvc fittings. You got my general idea, just use your imagination and come up with something that'll work good. Whether it'll increase your airflow, from your current setup I don't know. Maybe input from other people would help.

tpi355

I dno't know why its on there twice, and I don't know how to delete it either. Sorry!

Tricked-Out-Toy

iTrader: (1)

Ok I think I can see it. I look into that but I still dont think that solves the narrow cross section through the snorkel. Also I should have mentioned that I have already cut out the baffles and am running K&N's.

tpi355

O.K. best of luck to ya.

turbochargedrs

the only thing i really see helping is a big change that does cost some cash. You can upgrade to ram air. you can get the hood for 350 unpainted from one of the sponsors and then get the ram air box from somewhere but i wouldnt recomend getting any of it from ramairhood.com because they are just rediculously expensive.

Tricked-Out-Toy

iTrader: (1)

Are you talking about the SS ram air hood?

turbochargedrs

yea the ones you get from g and t fiberglass. then you just to get the ram air intake box. pretty much a long upward facing box with an exposed airfilter that runs staright through the intake hose you have. you can check the hood and g&t's link on the side of the page and check out the box at ramairhood.com's link but id see if someone is selling the box and or hood in the classifieds or on ebay becase ramairhood.com is very expensive and youd still have to get the g and t hood painted.

Tricked-Out-Toy

iTrader: (1)

I was also thinking about making the hood blisters functional. similar to this thread.https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/body...unctional.html

The only way I would do that is if I could make a sheet metal plenum attached to the hood with vacuum actuators to close dampers when the car was off keeping water out while being washed or in the rain. also with the vacuum actuators I could disconnect the vacuum if I ever got stuck in the rain (dont drive in the rain now)

This is more like a pipe dream than anything else but Would it be any better than the off the shelf "cold air" kits you can get?? who knows...

turbochargedrs

functional hood blisters are more to cool off the engine bay by having the air dam send air up from the bottom and it travels passed the radiator and then out of the blisters. I've been told that is what a cowl does too but cowls are more for clearence. Anyway the hood blisters are a bad idea if you dont want to make them shut with crazy vacume dampeners. that would be extremely hard and a pain in the *** to do right if it could even be done. you could however make the blisters fucntional and just close them with a lever in the car that could be pushed in the close or open and out would be the opposite. i guess resembling the headlight ****. if you were to installed a louvered set up on a shaft underneath the blisters you could control how far they were to open or close. if you really wanted to make them auto you could install a small motor and wire it back to a rocker switch in the car so that you could set it up to open one of two ways. 1 like the power windows you could set it up so you could control how much they open. 2 you could wire it to be on a fighter styel switch so when you flip the switch they open and there is no degree of control on how much or little.

you could probly use the same style switches and just set the blisters on a rail so when the motor opens it pushes the blisters open like a central air vent and when it closes it pulls them tight. it would probly work well with an acuator instead of a motor. and the blisters would need to be attached to a guide with a common rail attached to a single actuator so they open the same. it would take some fab to make the rails and attach the blisters correctly but it wouldnt be the hardest thing to do and it could all be done in home so you can work on it when ever instead of going out to the car to set it up all the time.

good luck with whatever you decide to do