What would be better for the Cobalt ss tc a Short Ram Intake or a Cold Air Intake? What are the pro and cons of both. DO they sound any different? Sorry I know noob question.

 

there should be tons of threads about this. on a ss/sc or ss/na cobalts. just depends on what you like better and wat livin conditions you are round to choose wat is better.

 

How would the conditions affect it i live in Saint Louis

 

a CAI would more than likely be the better choice on any car, as in theory it will draw "cooler" air from out side the engine bay. A Short Ram will draw in just as much air as a CAI, but it is drawing that air from the hot engine bay. They are both an improvement from stock

 

You arent going to get much gain with one vs the other, both are good to have over stock but both, aside from homemade, arent in existence yet. :-)

 

well yea the cai is good to get air in and short ram grabs all the hot air from ur engine so they are both better than stock as they say. you can prolly find vids for sri and cai on youtube or streetfire.net

 

but less risk of sucking in water with a short ram. if that even happens. hydrolock i think it is?

 

I once drove through a huge puddle in my 94 Z28 w/ a very low mounted k&n on. My car did not like it in the least bit.

 

My friend hydrolocked the engine in his neon...that sucked.

If you live in Galveston, Texas...go with a short ram.

 

i live in pa where it rains but nuttin serious... so not many puddles so i say CAI....

 

I live in alaska.....neither is good in the winter....too cold.

 

Really, I would think living in Alaska would be the best cooling mod on this site, lol!

 

CAI sits in the fender well, in front of the wheel I believe. Or at least, it will on the ss/tc cars once they hit the market, just on the opposite side from the ss/sc cars. It will be protected on the bottom by plastic, so driving through wet roads will pose no harm. You'll need to literally drive through a puddle deep enough to reach the filter to cause it to suck in enough water to fuxxor your engine.

 

I caught a little water in my home grown CAI today after driving through a 6 to 7 inch deep puddle at about 10 MPH so be carefull. I got to get down in there and work on some water management shielding. Even though its under the headlamp and fairly well closed off I still had a good cough as I tipped in the throttle at the stopsign. It was a little unnerving for a second. Its been raining like a Mo all day in Mich.

 

Well having used both... on the same car and then creating my own hybrid. (although they sell them this way as well I think)

Some years ago... I bought a CAI. It was nice, and the power was good. But one day I decided to check out the filter which wasn't the easiest thing to do being that it was buried in the fender. I found it to be just in very poor condition... covered with crap. So I converted the CAI to a short ram. It was in two pieces with a coupler so it made it easy.

Power decreased some, but it wasn't a crapload. Speaking of what I could feel...
It was without a doubt WAY better than stock. It worked great for me having the power increase and being able to monitor the filter and have it in a safe spot. We get bad winters here.

So then... I made some custom tubing that led to the front to catch some air. Sort of a ram air. But I was careful to have it remain as hidden as possible. Connected that to the stock air box which I had modified for the end of the short ram to sit in. Yet, not air tight. It had enough room to suck in some air from the engine bay also. To me, this was the best combo even if it was kind of a hack job.

But I think you can buy that sort of thing now... (not yet for the SS/TC)


Just one or the other...? I'd go short ram, just for peace of mind on a dd. On a track car... CAI.

 

On a molecular stand point the CAI is better because it's away from the heat generating engine and hot air is less dense (ie: colder air is more dense, there for the colder the air, the more air you get per cubic inch.) So the CAI has superior performance to a degree, unless you have a ram air hood to accompany the SRI then that's different. But yes, the SRI has a lot less chances of getting wet, as long as you take proper precautions and it's not somewhere like Seatle that is constantly raining because of the added risk and hassle. I've had a front mount CAI for 7 months and I still haven't gotten water in my motor.

 

Is there any was you can have a short ram filter then have a tube coming out of the top and runing it to the spot where the cold intake would be?

 

A moron with a Mustang GT just got towed into the shop Im a mechanic at the other day after hes car "broke" while driving. The verdict: he went through a big puddle and his CAI drew in water thus hydrolocking the engine... out it came, and we just put in a newly used one bought from a local scrap yard out of a donor GT.

It was an POS '98 yellow mustang GT w/just a CAI and cat-back. This guy was a donkey....he actually had painted onto his rear bumper in some fancy script "Optical Illusion"....

 

A lot of off-roaders do this with their snorkel setups. The filter sits in the engine bay, but the snorkel runs up above the roof. Think of a bucket with a lid containing the cone filter sealed up basically in line with the piping. Kinda hard to describe.

 

Sounds like a good idea - bring in the cold air from the fender, and retain easy filter maintenance in the engine bay. You could probably even use some kind of clear tube so you can see if your filter was dirty (lol).

 

So can I have a short ram intake with tube coming out of the top of the filter and have it go down to where the cai should be and have a filter there? And if there is would there be a benift or not?

 

Bumping this thread to say I once drove through a ******* huge puddle, so deep that when I drove out, there was steam pouring off all the hot engine parts, and I was fine. I was so freaked out, because I can't see how the filter wasn't just submerged- but I had no problems at all.

You see, I was cutting through a parking lot, and little did I know that there was a HUGE dip in front of me, completely filled with water, making it look like it was flat road in front of me with just a tiny bit of water on top.

That being said, I found this thread looking for info on short ram intakes so this doesn't happen again.

Until recently I didn't even think there were short ram intakes for the SS/SC. Anybody have pictures of an engine bay with one?

 

LOL, a 98 GT with exhaust and CAI is still rather slow, well for its year it wasnt too bad, but nowadays, he would get smoked by many, many cars. Its just a mid to high 14 second car.

LOL, didnt even notice it was a BUMP!!!