Intake air temp

[matt36415]

I bought a scangague for my aurion and one of the selectable info screens has intake air temperature. It plugs onto the obd port so its just displaying info that the car computer has.  I assume its temperature measured at the maf.

 

When the car is fully warmed up it is often 20 degrees C higher than ambient temp. Thats at in town speeds. I have yet to see what happens at a constant 80 or 100 kmh.

I think a 20 degree C air temp drop would be very worthwhile if it could be achieved. Has anyone else actually measured their intake air temp or done a before and after on a 'cai'?

[trentmeyer23]

Under bonnet temps will always be higher. It is often referred to as heatsoak, it is inevitable that you will get this. There are methods(nitrous and methanol injection) to cool the intake air; however, these are illegal on a road car.

[Full-Throttle]

I have an UltraGauge in my Aurion which also measures the air intake temp from the MAF sensor and it's usually only about 3-8 degrees Celcius higher than the outside temp displayed on the cluster. I have a cold air intake fitted with the pod filter located behind the LH fog light however, but even with the factory intake box it was only up to 10-degrees higher when cruising most days. Goes up a lot when the car has been parked due to heatsoak, but there's not much difference when driving. 20-degrees is a big difference. You might want to calibrate the ScanGauge if that's possible.

[matt36415]

thanks, might try a different intake

[07Prodigy]

Hey, just some food for thought...

have you ever seen in building that the A/C pipes are wrapped in thermal protection?

could you do something similar to the intake?

[trentmeyer23]

Yes, there a plenty of thermal wrap/tape options on the market as well.

[07Prodigy]

Would it make a difference?

or would you have to take it away from the radiator?

[trentmeyer23]

2 hours ago, 07Prodigy said:

Would it make a difference?

To temperatures, yes.

2 hours ago, 07Prodigy said:

would you have to take it away from the radiator?

It would help.

[matt36415]

Not surprisingly I found that in town, low throttle driving got a temp difference of up to 20deg C. At 80 the difference was about 10 and when accelerating at 80-100 the difference dropped to 3 which seems pretty good. Im still thinking od experimenting with different air source locations

[07Prodigy]

Ok, so why not try both?

that way your cold air should stay cold.

or have the intake down low (although this cold possibly suck up water) then run it through an intercooler (which should cool it further) then wrap it (which would keep it cool) so the it should be really cold. This would give better power and economy.

 

[trentmeyer23]

Intercoolers are designed to cool the heated, compressed air from a turbocharger or supercharger with ambient air or water.

These temperature differences are far greater than Matt is experiencing, so intercooling is almost pointless and definitely a waste of money.

[07Prodigy]

Ok cool, so maybe just change location and wrap it.

 

 

[Hiro]

11 hours ago, trentmeyer23 said:

Intercoolers are designed to cool the heated, compressed air from a turbocharger or supercharger with ambient air or water

 

I wonder how much of an effect you'd get if you ran WTA with the water swapped out for refrigerant.....

 

Then again, the gains would almost certainly be offset by the flow restriction/reduction, even in a Laminova-style WTA.

[trentmeyer23]

11 hours ago, Hiro said:

I wonder how much of an effect you'd get if you ran WTA with the water swapped out for refrigerant.....

LOL

I doubt the refrigerant last long before boiling. You would then need to run a full A/C system with the evaporator acting as the WTA intercooler, even then it would be terrible.

Dry ice would be good in the short term, but not good over the long term.

[matt36415]

Since my intake air temp comes from the obdii port, I assume it is the temp at the maf sensor in the plastic tubing just after the air box - is that the most likley source of the intake air temp measurement?

 

Im going to source air from the hole in the bumper where more expensive models have their fog lights. I did this with a previous camry and it didnt have any problems with water etc.