DO you ice your intake after runing at the track??????

90 lx convert. said:

I ice my intake and discharge tube on the blower too. On my car the difference between cool down and icing or hot lapping without any icing is about a tenth and a half. Mike

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I have seen my car pick up a tenth with icing....

yep it works

Placebo effect, doesn't work.

Shaggy - sounds like you've adopted an "it won't work until you prove it to me" approach. All I can tell you is that if the intake manifold is at 40F when you crank the car up before staging, and ambient air is at say 80F, chances are your intake charge is going to be cooler than if you sit there idling the whole time with the hood shut and the intake manifold is at 240F with 80F ambient air. Icing allows any possible beneficial heat transfer to be in your favor rather than working against you. Since there's a 1/2%-1% HP gain for every 10F drop in intake air, it's worth trying to stack the odds in your favor. Forget the thermo/heat transfer textbooks ( I sold mine back to the bookstore) - you don't see ice all over the pits at drag races for no good reason. If it wasn't working, people wouldn't have been doing it for so long. As for cooling the fuel - if you can't get more air in (cooler denser air) all getting a more dense charge of fuel in does for you is make you run rich - losing power if you had the proper a/f in the first place.

I think you might have made a placebo post!

Mr. Yount,

I see that you look at things in an adversarial manner...

Why do lots of people ice their intakes in the staging lanes? Same reason as 90% of people like SpongeBob-Square Pants, or as all those folks a few years back wore their 'CK' shirts - because it's the latest thing.... If so-and-so is doing it, it must be good, so I'll do it too!

You have missed the point completely in what I'm stating. The temp. of the intake manifold itself will not have an influence on the incoming air temp, there is not enough saturation time for there to be an effect. The air is moving at aprox. 10 cfs - 600cfm, tell me where and how the heat transfer will take place? There is not enough dwell time - saturation time. If the air was stagnant then yes, then the air would be hotter. But in this N.A. application the incoming intake air charge will not change temperature from O.A.T. all the way to the combustion chamber (well, maybe ~2-3 degrees). Please show me in a formulaic manner if you care to differ.

Most race car applications produce abundant power in a richer than stoichiometric condition.

Good day Mr. Yount

wow thats deep

No one i know ices only the ricers at our track do.
Personally I just like to see my speed and time in "normal" conditions. Having a block of ice on your intake isnt something you do driving down the street.

Didn't intend to be adversarial Shaggy - you can call me Michael by the way if you like; Mr. Yount is my dad. On the contrary, I understood your point quite clearly about velocity of the flow through the intake and how much heat transfer might occur between the intake and the air stream. I simply didn't agree with your conclusion. That's ok by me - that's what forums are for - public venues where we can share opinions, differing or otherwise.

People haven't been icing just recently; the SpongeBob or Calvin Klein analogy is a poor one - they've been icing for as long as I've been going to the strip, which dates back to the early 60's. They've been looking for cool intake air and cool fuel since they started racing cars. Racers have a way of figuring out what works - and they don't need "formulaic" proof - they use trial and error most of the time. That's why people do it - because they make more power when they do. How much more? I don't know - I've not bothered to rig up thermocouples in the intake and do some testing. But, unlike you, I don't see the need to. All you've got to do is talk to folks who've 'measured' the impact by their reduced e.t.'s. "Please show me in a formulaic manner..." -- like I said before, you're clearly in an 'I don't believe it til you prove it to me in my terms' mode on this one. Suit yourself.

As for a/f ratio and power production - most racers want to run as close to stochiometric as they can without risking the challenges that go along with running too lean. So, yes, they usually do run a bit richer than stochiometric. The point was that cooler fuel alone does nothing but change your mixture; and since most racers are running as close as they safely can to stochiometric, more fuel is gonna make it richer which will usually equate to less power. Cooler air on the other hand will cause the system - efi or carb - to supply the additional amount of fuel needed to go along with it. At least that's how it looks to me. And thanks for the well wishes at the end of your message - I'm having a great day!

Cool! (pun intended)

Happy New Year!

SHAGGY87 said:

Cool! (pun intended)

Happy New Year!

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I agree with shaggy, in theory cooler more dense air makes more hp, but the intake itself is a 30 lb piece of metal that hot from driving now your telling me by ploping a bag of ice on top is going to cool the intake to make enough difference on the incomming air, that your et will reflect it. Again I say its the placebo effect also.

I would say yes it could happen if you decide to take the upper and lower intake off in between runs and through it in a freezer for a couple of hours and could magically install it within 10 mins, than I would say yeah it effect performance.

Remove the back seats and all unnecessary weight...

If you have traction problems and cant get better tires, put some weight in the back, like cinder blocks.

Deflate the rear tires to 20-25 psi, and inflate the fronts to around 35 or 40.

Remove the front sway bar (which takes a little time).

Removing the air filter in your intake assembly. I tested this myself and it was good for 0.5 mph in the trap. Which, in my opinion, is hardly worth the risk of getting something, like leaves or dirt, pulled into your engine.

Turn the A/C off.

Works on most carb`d combo`s too!

Back about 20 years ago, I had a pretty much bone stock 69 Mustang Mach 1, with a factory 428 Cobra Jet, C6 auto & 3.50 gears. It also had the functional "Shaker" hood scoop that sits on top of the air cleaner housing, & allows outside air into the air cleaner (or directly into the carb if you removed the filter & air cleaner lid) If you are not familiar with the old 352-428 Ford "FE" engine family, they have a very wide intake manifold that actually goes about 1" per side under the valve covers, basically as part of the cylinder heads(the pushrods go thru the intake manifold). Anyhow, it may be partially due to the extrawide intake getting warmer, but I sometimes layed towels on the intake manifold and filled it with ice, as the ice melted, I removed it with a turkey baster, & kept adding more ice, until shortly before it was time to make a pass. Even with the factory cold air scoop, it was common to pick up 1 to 1 1/2 tenths and 1 mph with the intake iced down. Now, on a carb application, this helps cool the air AND fuel mixture, whereas a EFI intake just has air going thru it, but it defineatly worked. On my Mach 1, it went from 13.5-6 ET@101mph, to low 13.4`s at 102mph, on normal everyday 14" radials (no drag radials or ET Streets back then!). Even on my low 10 second 428 powered Fairmont it`s worth almost a tenth. Interestingly enough, I had tried fuel "cool cans", which made no noticable differance. Although the carbs float bowls would be cool to the touch in the lanes, I believe that the fuel that had time to cool down was used up by the time the car was driven to the burnout box, & staged.

icing the intake on an EFI car allows the intake to cool, which in turn provides a lower reading on the sensors in the manifold, which tricks the computer into thinking the engine is cold so it is safe to supply a better timing and fuel curve

at least thats what my westech "ford 5.0 dyno tests" book says

not sure though ive never done it im carbed

All you guys that are saying it dosnt work....BS...I know it works. Everytime i use it i gain a tenth or better...say what you want.

mike keirstead said:

All you guys that are saying it dosnt work....BS...I know it works. Everytime i use it i gain a tenth or better...say what you want.

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and all u guys saying it works on an efi car... BS... I know its not possible to cool the intake that much to make a difference in between runs. Ever hear of the concept of intercooler on boosted applications, wonder why they don't give that up and make intake manifold coolers instead since if works so well like you say.

Point im making is that in between runs your not going to be able to cool the intake enough to make a difference in your run. Its all in your head. After every run I change my left sock and I gain 1/10 so it must work too.

it WORKS!!!!!! ... people have been doing it forever....since the begining of EFI and before as McFairmont stated...it's not the new thing or ricer...back in the day when there wasn't a crazy aftermarket for efi, icing the intake was one of the best ways to drop a tenth or trap 1-2 mph...read the issue of mm&ff with the mysti-chrome cobra on it...if you ddin't know, it's one of the aspects of the famed ten minute tune up...i think some one would catch on to the placebo affect thing after almost 20 years of efi...someone bury this thread please

it WORKS!!!!!! ... people have been doing it forever....since the begining of EFI and before as McFairmont stated...it's not the new thing or ricer...back in the day when there wasn't a crazy aftermarket for efi, icing the intake was one of the best ways to drop a tenth or trap 1-2 mph...read the issue of mm&ff with the mysti-chrome cobra on it...if you ddin't know, it's one of the aspects of the famed ten minute tune up...its been around forever, and i think someone would catch on to the placebo affect thing after almost 20 years of efi...someone bury this thread please

sorry bout double post...doh

Whatever you say dude....it works for me.