Finally Got Screwed, Number and Pics

I hate to tell you guys this, but the benefit of that added air volume and therefore flow of a large open element conical filter still far outweighs the negative drawbacks of sucking in the slightly warmer under hood air temperature. Especially with a blower car!!! And let you in on another little secret....Kenne Bell doesn’t recommended the use of an aftermarket open element filter not because it’s harmful to the engine, or that it won’t gain any additional horsepower. It’s because they want you to spend the money on “their” cold air kit, instead of rigging up your own.

I had this same worry as a lot of you when I went from the stock airbox with a K&N drop in to a large volume open element filter on my car. The tuner at the shop that did the dyno work to my car told me that they'd tested on several occasions the differences between each and the result was a whopping 7-deg C rise in the air inlet temperature. Not to mention the conical filter provided literally double the flow potential!

The end result....I picked up 21RWHP going from the restrictive flat panel filter in my modified stock air box which I had also previously upgraded to a K&N (and was also completely shielded from heat BTW) to a 9” conical open element K&N unit. I did later rig up a shield around it, but it was mostly to keep the filter clean and because it added a little “Bling” under the hood.

Either way....added airflow, even if it is a little warmer than ambient is going to be more of a benefit, than a hindrance!

Yeah, but the problem with a lot of those "inner fender" style CAI's is that because they draw from the inner fender, space is limited, which also limits the size and capacity of the filter they're able to utilize. Fine for most N/A applications since their demand isn’t so high, but a hard spinning blower will really draw the air in and can cause quite the demand as far as over all volume is concerned. Not to mention the straighter you can get the incoming air entering your Mass Air meter, the less turbulent it becomes and the more accurately it will sample it’s reading.

As far as actual inlet temps are concerned....once you get moving and the airflow starts rushing through the engine compartment, it's all up for grabs. You may be able to pull slightly cooler air in from a stand still with a fender draw style kit, but since a Twin Screw is constantly compressing the air (even at idle), you're continuously heating the Air Charge as it squeezes between the rotors so most of that “slightly cooler ambient air” goes to waste anyway? You'd probably be further ahead with a more efficient heat exchanger set up at that point, than you would a complex air intake the draws from the inner fender.

I'm not saying fender draw cold air kits don't work, since there area obviously hundreds out there who've chosen to use them, but in a supercharged application, I'm betting they aren't making any more power or any better drivability that a guy choosing to run a strait shot with the large volume filter on the end. And I had real world dyno results to convince me of that!