Athletes, and sports fans maybe, know the value of a second wind. It comes to a point in an athlete's performance when his strength comes back to him. It carries him to keep his lead amidst an unyielding opposition, or otherwise gives him another shot at the competition. It can win games. If not, it goes to show what the athlete is capable of. In both cases, a second wind comes down as something exceptional. It becomes a reminder of how hard the few good athletes try, of their hard-fought victories and defeats; it goes on to show that the athlete is someone who knows how it is to try.
This idea of a second wind is not lost in the automotive industry. It comes in the fixation with air and fuel delivery into the vehicle's engine. Air and fuel make up the vehicle's combustion material. Optimize their flow into the engine, so the major movers of the hot rod concept say, and the vehicle stands better chance against any drive application. The demise of the carburetor tells of how fundamental that fuel and air ought to be delivered systematically. Separate fuel injection and cold air intake systems are now the stock power delivery method of modern cars.
The
cold air intake is like a fresh set of lungs for the vehicle's engine. As the underhood parts take the heat of engine operation, ambient air becomes too hot to be useful. In most cases, drive applications can affect the quality of air that your vehicle is breathing in, like altitude, weather, etc. Cold air is potent with oxygen. In such form, it provides more potential energy. The cold air intake draws oxygen-filled cold air from outside the vehicle and into the engine. It is then mixed with the optimized fuel from the fuel injection system and the resulting mixture "hypercharge" the engine, running it on a performance-conducive burn material.
Fitting a
cold air intake system into a vehicle can also improve its fuel consumption. With a steady supply of cold air, the optimized fuel in the vehicle's fuel injection system is not wasted. When less and low-quality air is thrown in at the burn material, the fuel is at the risk of getting snuffed out. The more serious threat of a vehicle without a cold air intake system, however, comes not in the possibility of squandering precious fuel, but in the prospect of getting its engine broken by the buildup of snuffed-out fuel residues.
Currently, there are three types of
cold air intake system available. The Ram cold air intake system offers the possibility of generating great amount of horsepower. It is removed from the engine bay to draw in fresher, colder air. It comes, however, with the downside of water exposure and debris blockage. The open element cold air intake and the sealed cold air intake systems, on the other hand, replace the vehicle's air box with a reusable air filter, tube, and couplers. Without the air box, the cold air intake gains access to all the surrounding air in the engine bay, while canceling out the hot air that can result to horsepower loss.
