Is it just me or does it seem that the truck is almost immediately ready for through-the-hood ram air? With the stock filter and all, it wouldn't take much to convert to ram air or use a cowl.

Either way, these kits don't look like they help that much. The factory intake appears much better.

 

Please explain.

 

Well, usually the kit will change the air path or offer an open air filter, something like that.

Ford did a good design in the first place with getting the air from the wheel well. And there's only one 90-degree turn in the intake system, so it looks pretty good. The only thing that I see some of these kits offering is ram air (kind of, even though it looses its effect when going through multiple turns) and upgraded piping. I'd say get some stainless steel tube to replace the stock plastic and you'd be good to go...

 

Maybe I'm missing the concept of the Volant, but I thought the idea was to pressurize the box from the ram air. Something the other aftermarket and factory air intakes cannot do. Add to that a high flow filter and whala. Did I miss the boat on this product or what?

 

Oh, I don't know... maybe I did!
I was just going off of basic design concepts as I understood them. If anyone can explain how it works to me, that'd be awesome!

 

A couple areas where the two aftermarket intakes I'm looking at (Volant & Airaid) have over the stock intake are;

1. Intake runner is larger then stock and without the sound chamber/baffles, Should have higher flow capacity.

2. Opening of the intale is larger then stock, which seems quite small for a motor of this size (check out the Airaid site for the new F150, they show them side by side). I'm used to tuning motorcycles which are about 1/5 the size and their intakes are larger then the stock F150's. EPA sound regs play a big part why the factorys have to have them this way.

3. I would think most important, larger Air filter. The stock filter is very small, infact I was shocked how small it was, again considering the size of the motor (mine 5.4L), again my motorcycles filters are larger. I do not know the size of the Volant but the Airraid filter is probably a couple times larger then stock and of a higher flowing material.

This is my opinion (no facts yet) that the stock system is a restriction is the system and that realizing the full potentional of freeflowing exhaust and re-chip/re-tune without and freeflowing intake will net less gains.
I'm susprised the companies that make the sell the intakes kits don't show the stock system and their system on a flow bench to see the actual potentional flow improvements, unless there are none 8-)

William
Santa Cruz,Ca

 

Anyone know the purpose for having those on the intake? I saw them but didn't know the purpose unless it was for a quick burst of air when you punch it. If that's the case, it doesn't seem like a great idea to drop in blazing hot stagnant air when you punch it! lol

 

The whole idea of a ram-air kit is to force air into the intake instead of letting the engine suck it in itself. The ram-air is basically a poor man's supercharger (or a smart man's, whichever).

At a standstill the ram-air and cold-air induction (CAI) intakes are basically operating the same. Both are drawing in air that is cooler than the air temperature under the hood. The ram-air system really starts to shine when the vehicle starts moving, and air is forced into the intake by the scoop that is placed usually below the front fascia of the car, or a hood scoop, so that it directly catchs the air. The faster you go, the more air gets forced into the intake. Ends up having a very similar effect to a supercharger, just much less effective. The operation of the CAI does not change at speed, other than it is now getting cooler air and the ambient air temp under the hood is lower.

I think the rule of thumb is, every 10-degree drop in the intake air temperature equals a gain of 1hp. That sound right? So a poorly designed stock intake could be pulling in air at 120+ degrees easy, but with a CAI kit, is pulling in outside air at say 70-degrees. That's a gain of 5hp just by pulling in cooler air, not to mention the better air-flow of a CAI kit over a stock intake.

I have shyed away from ram-air kits in the past because of the probability of getting water up your intake tube and into the engine-- no good. Yeah yeah, water can't flow uphill. But when it is pooring rain, you have a semi-truck in front of you spewing water everywhere, and you are doing 75mph on the highway, water can easily reach it's way to the engine. And for anyone that is going to take the truck offroad, ram-air is obviously a very very bad idea right from the start. Offroaders tend to get their intakes as high as possible so that creek water and mud don't get sucked up.

On thinking about the rain water issue though, ram-air is a fairly basic concept that has been used on lots of sports cars throughout the years. Either through hood scoop, or like the Volant. Does anyone know how these systems deal with water getting into the intake? I can't imagine it can be good, or completely avoidable with this type of system.

Hope this helps.

- Justin