What is the difference between cold air intakes and a normal air intake?
Money, mostly. In olden days the air cleaner picked up warm intake air from above the engine. Nearly all modern engines get air from outside the engine compartment, then warm it in an intake manifold or plenum that is heated by the engine coolant to improve vaporization. Either way, the engine breathes warm air.
The best cold air intake that you can get is the factory cold air intake. Your intake all ready has duct work that gets its air from outside the engine compartment. The really funny part is that most aftermarket cold air intakes do not get there air from outside the engine compartment. They get there air from directly behind the radiator (one of the hottest places that they could possibly get air from) so they are really hot air intakes not cold. also the fancy aluminum pipe does not flow any better that a plastic pipe (it just looks better to some people). They do not give you any noticeable H.P. gains what so ever. Look at it this way if you completely remove the air filter and all the duct work going to it you may gain 2 or 3 horse power so how is putting a shinny pipe on it going to make it flow better than a completely unrestricted flow. does not make sense huh. All they do is cost you a bunch of money look shiny and make you car sound like it has a vacuum leak. So unless you just have to have that shiny metal pipe leave the air intake alone you will be sadly disappointed Oh and actually Michael even 30 years ago cars where made with duct work that fed the engine cooler air from out side the engine compartment. The reason that not many older cars still have the duct work is because they where generally made out of reinforced cloth or paper and over the years they rotted away and no one wanted to spend the money to replace them because they did not make much of a difference. I would think that after 35 years of fixing cars you would know this but aparently not.
Cold air intakes get the air straight from the outside while normal air intakes is from the engine compartment.
