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Ram air intakes are basically a marketing term. Years ago there were articles on the ram effect of air on an internal combustion engine and as I recall it was about 4 hp at 75 mph and did not make much difference until you were at 150+ mph. For the C5 Corvette you are looking at two sources of air to the engine, those systems that are using engine bay air (which can easily exceed 150F) or outside ambient air. OF the latter, there are a few commercially available and some old standby's. Callaway and Vera-Ram are the better known with a Halltech-thu the front license plate opening-, Icebox, and Vortex. All the others are using the heated engine bay air, some are better filters than the others. The LS1 engine has over 80% of its operating (PCM) system as predetermined, unchangeable, firmware and about 19%, tuneable, of it being able to change.
Best bang for the buck is the Vararam. It may not show it on the dyno but it's been proven over and over with track trap speeds. There's a long history of it here on the forum if you do some digging. It's still available for the $250-300 range.
Best bang for the buck is the Vararam. It may not show it on the dyno but it's been proven over and over with track trap speeds. There's a long history of it here on the forum if you do some digging. It's still available for the $250-300 range.
Very true. I've had them on 2 out of 4 c5's that I've owned and you can tell the difference. Your engine will run cooler, too.
If you switch to a Cold air system, that is not a rated be sure to hold on to the stock air intake system part. You may have to put the stock system parts back in operation, for smog test.
The Vera Ram and Callaway type systems bring in cooler ambient air into the intake. A normal dual cone, K&N, Zip tie, stock, etc utilizes engine bay heated air from the engine compartment. On my car, during the summer months, I was running 145-170F intake temps past the MAF with the stock intake vs 80-100F temps with a VeraRam. Cooler air is more is more dense thus more O2 enters the intake per piston stroke and can yield slightly more hp. At 110 mph that can amount to almost 10 hp or 0.1 sec faster at a drag strip. With some tuning and a VeraRam, I am now running 109-110 trap speeds at the drags vs 107-108 stock.
I have a Blackwing which is very similar to the K&N ,they are less restrictive and you can clean them.They may give you a couple HP gain but they do look good.
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Yeah, that K&N is not a cold air intake, but it will help some. I ran a Blackwing on my last two C5s and while I really couldn't tell a difference in HP, it did look good in the engine bay and I think it flowed a bit better than the OEM unit.
If you are into drag racing a dyno tune is the way to go, if you are into canyon runs, HPDE and autocross then a scan/log tune is better. The dyno tune will max the upper rpm range while the scan/log will develop a better mid torque range. Any cold air system will not perform much better on a dyno than a regular intake, however on the road the improvements show up. What is more important to you, running on the street or at the strip. That is the more important question.
If you are into drag racing a dyno tune is the way to go, if you are into canyon runs, HPDE and autocross then a scan/log tune is better. The dyno tune will max the upper rpm range while the scan/log will develop a better mid torque range. Any cold air system will not perform much better on a dyno than a regular intake, however on the road the improvements show up. What is more important to you, running on the street or at the strip. That is the more important question.
A good dyno tune will cover the whole engine speed range. I remember stopping in at the shop once while they were tuning my car. The tuner was sitting on the dyno holding a steady 4000 rpm or so and dialing in that region. He did that across the whole spectrum on the dyno before taking it to the street for any final driveabiltiy corrections.
