cold air intake or mod airbox?? Read this 1st.

[Hank]

Even though I no longer have the Army Bauer, I thougt this info would be useful to you guys. Once I get the lift kit on the Astro, one of these days, I'll post picks. I've been dinking around with engine programming and tuning lately and discovered something interesting. Since the Ex always had a ping after modding the airbox I figured I would post the following here also..


Depending on your vehicle you may have made a major mistake if you have modded your airbox or added an improper "cold air" intake setup.

On the astro I opened up the airbox and removed the restrictive air intake tube. This caused another major problem that you can't tell with out a scanner. Another symptom for this is pinging..

Look at the red gauge in the attached photo. This is the intake air temp. It was 60F outside on the way to work and I am sucking in 120F air.

The airbox is up on top of the radiator and not in the direct path of incoming air. Basically I was sucking in engine compartment air. I confirmed this by getting up to about 65mph. and the temp dropped a bit. Down to about 85f. Should have been much lower.

I'm going to put the factory intake tube back in. I had to remove it originally as this is where my trans cooler lines ran.

 

[Hank]

Got some PM's from some nice folks. I should have posted this.

The software is from www.hptuners.com

They are working on more support for Ford and Dodge right now.. Don't hate me for running GM these days

Can't wait till they get Dodge support so I can tune my wife's Caravan

 

[Jason94sport]

Did you test this with the stock intake all in place? to get a baseline?
It's common for a short ram intake(this is the kind that the filter is in the engine bay) to always suck in hotter air. The benefit is that it sucks more air then a stock intake box. This lets it breath better. Yes it's hotter air but it's flowing with greater velocity.

A true CAI puts the filter outside of the engine bay, & gets the benefit of both velocity & cooler air.

And what pinging are you referring to? I've never experience that.

 

[Hank]

Yep, shoved the snorkle in. Never got over 73 this afternoon...


My Ex pinged after drilling the airbox out. Usually when you tried to accell at 45-50 while the TC was locked. Never got rid of it.. Astro exhibited the same behavior. Assmuming the Ex was the same problem.
All the best.