Has anybody ever thought of running the AC into the airbox of a car? I bet some of you have thought about it    I wonder if it would increase the HP more than a regular CAI???? Since it's forced down the hose via a fan we could call it Cold Air Induction!  

ya ive thought about this too, when i was looking at cold air intakes, but i think the hose that would bring the cold air to the intake would heat up if u ran it though the engine bay, losing more power the longer the car ran. right? and running the hose outside the car, would be weird looking(back to the future 4 lol), and the air will warm up anyways cus its a long way from the air vents to the air box, or even if you got the air from where it comes out of the AC unit ( most likely meaning you wouldnt have AC in the car anymore).

could there be a way to move the AC to the front or a second AC unit thingy?  

We could insulate the hose by putting a another hose of bigger diameter on top of it and placing that insulation foam in the gap between the two. I used to be a construction worker and that stuff is of the highest resistance to heat than anything (speaking for home insulation other than adobe...) On the No A/C for us; we could just take up one of the pipes for the A/C like the passenger side one.  

hmmmm...  i wanna try that as soon as my new alternator comes in,if its not going to be too much of a hassle    

but isn't this like using a lighbulb to charge the solar panel that the lightbulb runs on?... you shouldn't be gaining any horsepower because you have to sacrifice horsepower to turn the AC on to begin with...  

forgot about that lol.

how much horsepower does a car lose when the A/C is on?

and how much would the car gain with the A/C blowing into the airbox?  

Master_Shake029:
Has anybody ever thought of running the AC into the airbox of a car? I bet some of you have thought about it    I wonder if it would increase the HP more than a regular CAI???? Since it's forced down the hose via a fan we could call it Cold Air Induction!



Theroetically to do this is all you would have to do is remove the passenger compartment heat exchanger (a small radiator basically)  from its local in the HVAC unit and some how place it in the intake track somewhere preferably closer to the intake manifold. Now i'm no einstien,  but i would imagine that there would be some engine tuning involved to fully extract the power  and there still is the issue of power loss from the drag of the compressor pump (which isn't small, just drive  an 04 Sunfire manual and you'll know what i mean) that could negate any power gain. Of note the reason that intercoolers are used is generally to cool the intake air because its been heated up by compression through forced induction(Turbocharger/Supercharger). Basically your likely better off getting an exhaust and intake than pluming your AC to work as an intercooler on your Naturally Asperated car, not to mention you now have no AC. This is probably why you don't see it.  None-the-less an interesting concept.  

But consider this... If it works we would've created the first perfect machine. If it takes 4 hp to run the A/C and we gain 6 then there we have it! A machine that uses less power to create more...  But since you do make sense let's rephrase or create a variant to the conundrum:

What if you put a hose with A/C to the airbox of a Turbocharged/supercharged engine? Or its intercooler....

Wait nevermind that...that makes no sense... You could just put Ice on the intercooler.

We or someone needs to test this... To the Buick Dealership!!!!!  

kinda off the subject, but i found freezy packs in the freezer 2day.  the stock airbox in my car is huge, i know i could get at least 1 of em in there without restricting air flow too much. wonder if that would help if i go autocrossing or w/e.  

I don't know...But if you restrict the airflow, don't you loose alot compared to what you gained?  

idk, i guess i would do one of those gel packs you put on broken feet and stuff to save space. the hole where the air comes in is about a half of an inch higher then the bottom,  so maybe if i got a relly slim gel pack it wouldn't restrict the air flow. or bunch it up at the end of the air box, so air would still be comming in.

im gonna try this before i buy a cold air intake and see if i can notice a difference or not.  

Even if you don't restrict the airflow, the ice-pack won't have enough surface area to cool all that air rushing past it. There is a crap-load of air being sucked in at WOT, hence the intake growl, and all that air simply brushing past the flat plastic surface of the ice-pack won't do a danm thing.  

If you're really serious about trying this theory out, instead of using ice packs for feet, I would suggest taking a heater core (preferably a smaller one that you can place in front of the air filter and pump ice water through it. You can do that by taking a regular ice chest and filling it with ice water and place some kind of pump in it. Have the heater core connect to the ice chest and back again to the heater core and have it circulate the ice water. This is only if you're interested how much horsepower can be gained by running cold air into the intake which will not be worth all the trouble for the amount of power gained.

I also want to point out that all this depends on air speed across the core. The slower the air speed, the more heat is going to be exchanged. The higher the air speed, the air will not linger long enough in the core to get adequate heat exchange. For example, at idle, the air exiting the core will be much cooler than say at wide open throttle.

Like others have said, the parasitic loss of engine power from running the A/C compressor will most likely not be worth the gains you may get from the cooler air entering the engine.