Has anyone done this? DaveO had told me it does make a difference in keeping the intake air cooler. Less heat (from engine bay) absorbed through intake tube. If so, what materials are used and where are they found? Pics on your car encouraged please.

Thanks.

tD

 

Don't waste your time.

 

The clueless one again speaks of how another mod he's never tested doesn't work.

 

are you using a cai or a short ram? If its a short ram then i would wrap it up it will help a little, but if its a CAI i wouldnt bother. The air is already comming in from the front and its moving fast enough through the tube where i doubt it will make any difference at all.

 

I use the Z tube/pop charger set up. If the insulation helps keep some of the heat in the engine compartment from going through the intake tube a little bit it may be helpful. Not an expensive mod at all. DaveO is the only one I know that has done this. I was curious to know if anyone else has. Probably tough to notice any major difference though.

tD

 

While I've never owned any aftermarket intakes for the G35, I have data logged three different modified stock intake w/z-tube. At extended idle, a stock or mostly stock intake will see about 10 degrees over ambient. Once rolling for more than 15 or so seconds, the intake air is close to ambient (within a few degrees). Wrapping the intake is an insulating material won't do much of anything because:

1) The incoming air is what is getting measured and it's constantly moving. It would be foolish to think moving air in an 18" plastic pipe is somehow going to get heated significantly. I'm sure the air heats up a few degrees, but nothing that would impact performance.

2) There's hardly any intake temp difference, even at extended idle.


A POP charger setup will definitely suck in a lot more hot air and it has nothing to do with the intake pipes heating. It's all because the intake is sucking in engine compartment air. With one of my modded intake setups was basically a POP setup in that a majority of the filter was exposed to engine compartment air. At extended idle, intake temps were over 40 degrees higher than ambient. After about 30 seconds driving, the intake temps had fallen to a few degrees over ambient.

 

In theory the insulation helps when the car is in stop and go traffic. With the VQ motor generating so much heat and so close to the z-tube you can actually feel the heat. Here is a pic..

 

It's certainly not attractive.

 

Glenn - thanks for the pic. Your car?

 

I don’t know how much difference does it make, but it definitely doesn’t hurt.
Picture below is from DaveB friend’s sedan, I think, and mine look similar.

 

Dovla - great shot. Thanks.
Can't hurt, low price.

 

Yes it is but it's back to it's stock form so no more insulation.

 

Here's an interesting note.

At least on the dyno, heat soak of the tube and MAF can indeed affect the power results.

What I have noticed is after an extended number of pulls on the dyno, the engine bay becomes quite hot even with an open hood and with all the fans turned on. A good part of the tube heating is from convective heat rising up from the the stock exhaust manifolds.

After a number of pulls, you can actually measure a significant increase in air temperature as seen by the MAF. This was observed through the OBDII scanner.

And I know the MAF is right up against the filter so there isn't much time for the air to become heated but there was no mistaking the results on the OBDII scanner. And of course, as measured air inlet temperature went up from ~70'F to 95'F, the HP went down. By 5-10 HP when the MAF indicated the air was hot.

Note that the coolant temperatures were still regulated to 190'F on all pulls and the fans were still in the same positions with the same settings. And the atmospheric temperatures were constant.

I've always found this to be a problem when trying to conduct controls on extended testing.

I still wonder how it all works because it seems like the air filter housing doesn't have enough surface area or residence time to heat the air that much... but it's clearly there.

It may be possible that the air itself is not actually hot, BUT the MAF sensor and its housing are thermally soaked and this may be prompting false measurements of the air temperature.

Keep in mind though that even if the air isn't actually hot, you can and will still lose power if the ECU "thinks" the air is hot. The ECU adjusts timing based on percieved air inlet temperatures.

So weather or not the air is actually heated (jury is out on this), the air inlet temperatures as measured by the MAF clearly show an increase. And as seen by the ECU, a percieved increase will result in a real world power loss.

 

Agreed.

I tried my "Baked Potatoe" intake for a while a couple of years ago......not worth the effort.

It might help slightly for 5-6 consecutive drag strip runs, but that's about it.

 

^+1 People end up putting on aftermarket intakes for one or more of three reasons:

1) Sound (definitely louder)
2) Visual appeal (totally subjective)
3) Perceived power increase

I've never seen #3 be proven to gain more than ~5 HP, and even that's probably optimistic. It's hard to feel a 5 HP gain, so I would think it would be just as hard to feel a 5 HP loss. So in my mind the ugliness of thermal wrapping far outweighs any perceived performance gain / preservation.

But just my $.02.