What is Ram Air

I never really understood what people mean when they say i should put Ram Air on my car. I dont understand what it is??? Can someone please explain.

if you look at my car you can see on the hood it has an opening which is a dam to channel the air... once you are moving the air is forced into the opening which is connected to an air filter which connects to the throttle body which gives the car air.... it is a highly debated topic to how benificial ram air really is... it is usually proven that you have to be traveling at fairly high speeds in order to get great gains from it... it's mostly used for aestetical purposes now-a-days... a cold air intake gets you just as much in terms of horsepower and costs less... so in summary... when the car is moving, air is blowing into the hole in the hood which is connected to the engine...

THis is my understanding on RAM AIR. First off, RAM, it is what it is, imagine your hood "raming" the air infront of you, by this in result(sorry, i pressed the post quickly tab) the air is instead of being "fed" by regular driving, is being "RAMMED" into you throttle body thus creating a stronger combustion in your cylinder chambers, making a stronger explosion, burning better, giving you better gas mileage. Yes, is a slight improvement in the low end, now if you add an MSD ignition to the existing RAM AIR, then your low end will improve dramatically.

A ram-air intake is any intake design which uses the dynamic air pressure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure) created by vehicle motion to increase the static air pressure inside of the intake manifold on an engine, thus allowing a greater massflow through the engine and hence increasing engine power.
The ram air intake works by reducing the intake air velocity by increasing the cross sectional area of the intake ducting. When gas velocity goes down the dynamic pressure is reduced while the static pressure is increased. The increased static pressure in the plenum chamber has a positive effect on engine power, both because of the pressure itself and the increased air density this higher pressure gives.
Ram-air systems are used on high performance vehicles, most often on motorcycles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle) and race cars. Ram-air has been a feature on some cars since the late sixties, but fell out of favor in the seventies, and has only recently made a comeback. Modern parachutes use a ram-air system to pressurise a series of cells to provide the aerofoil shape.
At low speeds (subsonic speeds) increases in static pressure are however limited to a few percent. Given that the air velocity is reduced to zero without losses the pressure increase can be calculated according to:

lol, sounds like someone wikipediad:P


anyway,

1) big open hole on top or in front of car.
2) car goes fast
3) air has nowhere to go cept into the hole
4) air rammed into hole (hence ramair) is piped into the tb..
5) the air rammed in, acts like a mini-turbo/super charger, raising the pressure and amount of air the car sucks in, increasing amount of gasses into cylinder, raising the power output (more air in, bigger change in volume = more power)

oh, a side benefit of ram air is that you also get cooler air, which is more dense.. sort of like a CAI.. meaning again, more gases into cylinder,

Wikiwhat??? lol, eh i figured i would use it for once in my life and the chance arose lol, ram air = ramming cooler more dense air into you throttle body = more power

THis is my understanding on RAM AIR. First off, RAM, it is what it is, imagine your hood "raming" the air infront of you, by this in result(sorry, i pressed the post quickly tab) the air is instead of being "fed" by regular driving, is being "RAMMED" into you throttle body thus creating a stronger combustion in your cylinder chambers, making a stronger explosion, burning better, giving you better gas mileage. Yes, is a slight improvement in the low end, now if you add an MSD ignition to the existing RAM AIR, then your low end will improve dramatically.
You wouldn't see any gain in low end performance only in the top end because it takes a lot of speed before there is any noticeable difference in air pressure. The downsides to ram air on our cars is that it's not a direct shot in, there are turns and the air intake is placed on the top of the engine where it can become heat soaked causing the intake tempature to rise slightly... but like i said, this is a highly debated topic

Well... if you had a great big dog that ate brussells sprouts...

To me....true 'ram air' is a turbo or a blower. :lol:

Otherwise, you need to be going insane speeds to actually RAM air into your intake.

:1:

yeah.. but the ram air hood just looks so sexy...

Just to add, over on another board, they did an experiement in a wind tunnel to test the affects of ram air vs non-ram air cars (obviously the same vehicles, just different forms of intake systems). They found that the ram air vehicle gained an average of 8hp over the other, but lost that same 8 in aerodynamics. So, the net gain/loss was actually no change. Wait...here's the thread...
http://www.ls1.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39588

yup so... you're better off with a Cold Air Intake and a Ram Air hood for looks...

or you could always get blown... never a bad choice in my opinion...

yeah..im sure if you start doing some mods, that 8hp gap will start to increase with the CAI effect, not the ram air.. so cai will always be better than ram, but ram will be better than no cai once the mods are done to it..

I always considered the biggest benefit of the olde school ram air systems on the LT1 Firebirds & Firehawks as being the shortest and most direct path to the TB. Instead of being channeled and directed through a maze of connected twisted tubing, you basically had a large square and open air filter box sitting atop the radiator, being fed through an opening in the hood directly in front and sending the air charge through a straight 4-5” adapter tub directly into the TB (with the MAF sensor somewhere in between). There’s literally probably less than a foot and a half of distance between the actual TB and the point where the air is entering through the hood inlet. AND the path is very straight.

My old air induction system was a Moroso CAI. I always wanted to cut out a hole right below the air filter and attach some sort of mini-scoop to direct more air up into the chamber (giving the CAI and ram air intake in a sense - never got around to it). I’ve got an Ultra-Z hood now sitting around for when the car finally gets put back together & on the road, and I picked up an old Firehawk ram air intake assembly to make it functional, cause I figured I might as well (????). I’ve thought about whether or not I’m going to be losing or gaining power by going this route… maybe losing a bit on the low end. But I’m doing everything I can to get the most out of the ram air setup – cutting off all the cross sectional plastic pieces across the air intake assembly lid (to expose as much of the K&N air filter that will be dropped in); taking a dremel to the hood inlet where there’s at least a half-inch of composite material around the actual inlet “hole” of the hood that can be taken off (thus allowing more air to enter through the widened inlet); completely removing a sort of chamber that came applied to the hood behind the inlet – its basically a catch basin that stops the air and forces it to go down below into another section and then behind & back up into the actual air filter. My guess is that this chamber was added to the hood to prevent large particles or excess dirt/rain from flying directly into the air filter… but since my car is going to be a garage queen and seldom used toy (only under perfect conditions) I’m going to gut that entire chamber thereby allowing the incoming air a direct path to the air filter.

Will just have to avoid or stop in front of big clouds of dust (but we true car lovers do that anyways – we don’t want dust ever getting on our paint!) ;)

or you could always get blown... never a bad choice in my opinion...

thats always my choice too...:lol:

I always considered the biggest benefit of the olde school ram air systems on the LT1 Firebirds & Firehawks as being the shortest and most direct path to the TB. Instead of being channeled and directed through a maze of connected twisted tubing, you basically had a large square and open air filter box sitting atop the radiator, being fed through an opening in the hood directly in front and sending the air charge through a straight 4-5” adapter tub directly into the TB (with the MAF sensor somewhere in between). There’s literally probably less than a foot and a half of distance between the actual TB and the point where the air is entering through the hood inlet. AND the path is very straight.

My old air induction system was a Moroso CAI. I always wanted to cut out a hole right below the air filter and attach some sort of mini-scoop to direct more air up into the chamber (giving the CAI and ram air intake in a sense - never got around to it). I’ve got an Ultra-Z hood now sitting around for when the car finally gets put back together & on the road, and I picked up an old Firehawk ram air intake assembly to make it functional, cause I figured I might as well (????). I’ve thought about whether or not I’m going to be losing or gaining power by going this route… maybe losing a bit on the low end. But I’m doing everything I can to get the most out of the ram air setup – cutting off all the cross sectional plastic pieces across the air intake assembly lid (to expose as much of the K&N air filter that will be dropped in); taking a dremel to the hood inlet where there’s at least a half-inch of composite material around the actual inlet “hole” of the hood that can be taken off (thus allowing more air to enter through the widened inlet); completely removing a sort of chamber that came applied to the hood behind the inlet – its basically a catch basin that stops the air and forces it to go down below into another section and then behind & back up into the actual air filter. My guess is that this chamber was added to the hood to prevent large particles or excess dirt/rain from flying directly into the air filter… but since my car is going to be a garage queen and seldom used toy (only under perfect conditions) I’m going to gut that entire chamber thereby allowing the incoming air a direct path to the air filter.

Will just have to avoid or stop in front of big clouds of dust (but we true car lovers do that anyways – we don’t want dust ever getting on our paint!) ;)

Well, its not a question anymore if ram air actually works, but the adverse aerodynamic affects it may cause. The ram air does work, but the scoop is the problem. It causes turbulance in front of the car, causing disrupted airflow over and around the vehicle, creating an aerodynamic loss of power. Basically, the car will be fighting more drag, than with a smooth hood. No question that your intake setup will increase airflow, but with that, is a loss also. Road-wise, your car will be the exact same as it is now. Just with a cool look and now you can say you have 'real ram-air'.

On a 70 firebird the only ram air equipment i would want is a set of heads from a ram air car.