Cai Bypass Valve

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onetyme_sam

Senior Member
can anyone explain to me how the bypass valve on a CAI work? i have a SRAI on my car and im thinking of using CAI on it. but concerned about intaking water through the CAI on a rainy day
 
holey crap dude or should I say hly crp dde I dont think its that hard to type cold air intake but any way it just goes in the middle of you intake tube and if the bottom end where your filter goes becomes pluged it sucks in a little and pulls air from higher up where it is in your motor bay. kind of like a gill and while it is doing that the pressure at the bottom is lost and will allow the water (spuz) what ever may be to fall out do to gravity. doesn't hurt to get one at 50 bucs its a lot better than rebuilding a seized block yah know. Personally I don't have one and a very good friend did his motoe in last summer. I just don't really drive my car in the rain. I would recomend it though hope I helped
 
i dnt pln on drvng n the rain bddy, its jst n case it rains on me whn im drvng

thnx bddy, tht hlps alot :p

word of mouth, i dont think it really matters that i typed CAI as long as somone know what the acrynom is for. and you sure did :lol:
 
yeah, what he said, the pressure increases thus opening the bypass valve in order for the intake to suck in hot air from the engine bay. I never put on that bypass breather thingy, but I have had a buddy hydro his motor from the damn huge puddles after it rains during hurricane season in florida.


Milan
 
not really, It can take just a little bit. When your pistons go down, and lets say you suck a quarter cylinder full of water (making up numbers you have 10:1 compression and you have a 100CC cylinder at BDC) so you just suck 25cc's of water. When you go onto the compression stroke, your cylinder goes to 10cc's. Water (all liquids) do not compress. Now you have 15cc's of water looking for somewhere to go. Only thing it can do is stay there. The piston is on its way up and it ends up snapping a rod, this rod goes through the block, now you are screwed. (check out Chet's picture of his old b16a3 that went boom! )

Best solution. COMPTECH ICEBOX. Gives gains of CAI but the security of SRAI.
 
i'm assuming that the RAI on SRAI stands for "ram air intake", but what is the S there for?
 
Originally posted by kylemarhx@May 12 2003, 03:03 PM
i'm assuming that the RAI on SRAI stands for "ram air intake", but what is the S there for?
Click to expand...

"Short Ram Air Intake" as in the AEM short ram...
 
the bypass valve only works if the entire filter is completely under water. it doesn't work if the filter gets wet. a change in atmospheric pressure needs to occur, the only way that happens is if the entire filter is under water and stays under water. get it.

and if you notice all the testing they do with the bypass valve involves the filter being completely under water. the famous one is the the nsx. they have the filter in a fish tank next to it.
 
A little water is not going to hurt anything, expessally vapor (ie, vapor is gas, can compress) Otherwise, cars would randomly blow up on foggy days. Even when your driving in the rain you are pretty safe. It is only when you drive through a deep puddle when you are in danger of doing it.
 
i just wasnt too sure because if the filter soaked up some water and it sucked up more water than it would when its dry on a foggy day for instance. thanks
 
generally the 2000 degrees operating temp vaporizes small quantities of water as soon as it enters but if you suck anything more than a tiny bit its too much
 
if your this worried about it then either dont get a CAI
or dont drive whan there is standing water on the roads
or spend the extra money and get a comptech icebox
 
It has a tube that goes down to the bottom of the bumper like a CAI but, it functions like a normal air box with a hole cut into it for this extention tube, the tube is not connected to the bottom of the box, taking away the ability for it to pull up water, like trying to suck a drink through a straw with a crack in it. Consequently, even though cooler air is blown up this tube, the box still has the ability to pull a portion of it's air from the hot engine bay. Look on Comptec's site, they have dyno numbers and they suck. don't waste your money. I had a customer with an S2K that was set on this (Ice Box), the AEM got him 5 times more power for much less money.
 
the filter is in the stock location inside an airbox with a snorkle going down into the lower fender area (place a CAI usually sits) it is also tested at a vaccum 4x greater than your car can make at wide open throttle and will not suck water.... basicly the only way to make it suck water is to blast throuh a foot of water at 40mph and ram the water up the snorkle to the filter
 
Originally posted by cws13@May 13 2003, 12:41 AM
It has a tube that goes down to the bottom of the bumper like a CAI but, it functions like a normal air box with a hole cut into it for this extention tube, the tube is not connected to the bottom of the box, taking away the ability for it to pull up water, like trying to suck a drink through a straw with a crack in it. Consequently, even though cooler air is blown up this tube, the box still has the ability to pull a portion of it's air from the hot engine bay. Look on Comptec's site, they have dyno numbers and they suck. don't waste your money. I had a customer with an S2K that was set on this (Ice Box), the AEM got him 5 times more power for much less money.
Click to expand...

there is no seperation between the snorkle and the air box
ive seen comparison dynos of the comptech putting out similar but still more power than the AEM on an ITR
 
oh ok, i didnt know that the lower pipe wasnt connected to the bottom of the box. sounds pretty gay to me.

edit: well nevermind. if they did the tests with the snorkle sumberged, where else would it draw in air from?
 
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