I was having a discussion with my friend who has a 06 altima se-r and we were talking about my CAI and his upgraded intake. he said he didnt want a cold air intake he just wanted a normal one because he was afraid of hydrolocking(i know i know) so we got in this debate about the 2. although i had great arguments so did he.

so what are the true differences??

 

a CAI is generally routed lower than the engine and in a location where it pulls air from outside of the engine bay. Just by the location, it is much easier to submerge the filter element and hydrolock the engine. a short ram is the same thing, just sucks warmer air from the engine bay. short ram does give you slightly quicker throttle response, but does not give you as much of a hp/tq gain.

to put it in perspective......on acurazine, in 3G TL's, prob 80-90% of the members have CAI's and not short rams.

 

Not exactly sure what the upgraded intake is that you are refering to , but as far as the COLD AIR intake goes, the intent is to have cooler denser air being fed to the motor so that you can have more fuel added, a richer mixture to combust. The cooler air is obtained from outside of the engine compartment and on our vehicles that location is down low behind the drivers side lower grille which leads to the concern about hydrolock. With the larger diameter piping you have more flow with less restriction on your intake air charge as well.

My personal opinion is that if you hydrolock a TL you were doing something incredibly stupid. first off you need to be in deep enough water to fully submerge the intake tube in order for the suction to pull the water up the tube. your talking about 3.5" dia tube and probably 18" vertical rise. That is a trumendous amount of vacuum to do that, so your talking heavily into the throttle in 10" deep water and if your doing that you deserve hydrolock. This is Darwins way of eliminating the stupid

 

^yup, lol @ Darwinism at work.

short ram is more for noise than HP gains. throttle will be a bit more responsive but no real HP gain is to be had.

 

these were all of my arguments and his ended with..."But man mine just sounds cool, thats why i like short rams" i said ok to each his own

 

lol, wat a waste of an SE-R.

 

I know right!! i will give him this the F'in thing screams, sounds unbelievable

 

So...........to answer your question the difference is the temperature of the intake air charge, thats why its called a COLD air intake. Personally I would prefer the stock TL intake over a short ram. His is a HOT air intake, and that is the difference

 

CAI: Located outside the engine bay, sucks in cold air. It creates a very nice sound, but you can't hear under normal driving, you have to step on it to be able to hear it, which I like. Hydrolocking is not really a problem, cause like POHLJM mentioned, you've gotta be in some pretty deep water and your foot to the floor.

NON Cold Air intakes: As the name states, they suck in warm air instead of cold. They make more noise with less HP/TQ gains and a little quicker throttle response, as mentioned earlier.

 

good thing I have an AEM CAI lol, but going to switch the cone out for the K&N filter everytime I clean the AEM one.
~Jason

 

haha...you guys made me look so stupid because I hydrolocked my TL. The thing is when it happeend the water weren't that deep (as high as the curb about 5") and there was heavy traffic. I was in line and everyone went through just fine so I thought I could go through without trouble. But what do you know, my TL died in the middle.

Upon inspection, we found A TON of water in the engine, intake, and supercharger even though my engine was running in the water for less than 15 second. I guess the supercharger made it worse by sucking in more water. I didn't step on the gas at all when going through the water.

Not to scare anyone away from the CAI, but hydrolock COULD happen. However, what happeend to me might just be a special case because my TL is very low, it's supercharged, and my intake filter is a bit lower than the AEM one.