I was wondering if a aluminum polished intake elbow is any better then stock.
I wasn't sure if the aluminum elbow would heat soak hurting performance a little? What do you guys think? THANKS.

 

Better than stock? Not really... The alum elbows were made originally for the supercharge applications... My stocker was cracked and I replaced with alum for the ease of R&R.... Painted mine black for more of stock appearance..

As far as heat soak, I never took a temp reading.. No help there on comparing the two..

 

No better flow even though there is more cubic area in the rubber one.
Heat soak is more of a problem. I have had both.
I now have the 1LE rubber one.

Heatsoak will lower the WOT timing.

 

I'm not sure I understand why a little more heat will affect the WOT timing?

 

How can a elbow heat soak.....? Even if the elbow is gets hot, the air is passes through it fast. Plus the intake manifold is aluminum..... and that's only a few inches away.

I guess it could raise IAT in theory, but not sure how it could result in a measurable difference in real life.... on a stock NA engine

 

The reason I'm asking is because I saw this on Ebay and the guy says it heat soaks.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Vorte...Q5fAccessories

 

This has been discussed many times.

The timing is reduced when the air is warmer to combat detonation. Without this minor adjustment, the computer would pull timing out dramatically at the first instance of knock and put it back in slowly. Think of the IAT timing adjustment as a sort of running 'trim'.

Yes, the air is moving quickly when passing through that elbow but it still picks up heat quickly. Air has virtually no heat capacity meaning it doesn't take much to change its' temperature. When using a metal elbow, the rushing air scrubs the heat away and into the engine. It's the same thing as putting your hand behind the radiator when the fan comes on...the air is moving rather quickly but is still pretty hot from passing through the radiator.

In my honest opinion, it doesn't really make sense to use a CAI taking cooler air in from outside the engine compartment, only to heat it up with a metal elbow. It does make sense to use such an elbow with a supercharger to keep things from popping apart under boost....

 

I can easily verify the higher temps that I illustrated in my post with my dash mounted LT1 Scanmaster. It happens and is worse with any NON rubber elbow. As the IAT temps go up, the PCM pulls timing. Not theory, its fact.

 

I just not sure, that if you made a couple of dyno passes and the ONLY thing you changed was the intake elbow, you would see much difference. The same air that passed through the elbow is going to pick up heat in the intake manifold, cylinder head and combustion chamber.
I don't believe the "average Joe" is going to notice the difference beween the two. (what I ment by "measurable difference")

 

Maybe not noticable under the conditions you describe but, why pay for something that doesn't yield an advantage and may even yield a loss?

My intake manifold is cool enough to hold your hand on after a 2-hour drive and you want the mixture to warm up in the combustion chamber...

 

I put a used metal elbow on mine after seeing the crazy prices guys wanted for used stock elbows and i didn't have a choice since mine cracked

 

I had a black one on my car for awhile (summitt sells one that is powdercoated black) and didn't notice much of a performance difference. like the poster above my stock one broke and i took the car in for emissions failure diagnostics and found out the only problem was a tear in the elbow. when the shop said what they ordered was $100 and confirmed it was the plastic elbow i had them cancel the order and got one from summit. they had taped my old elbow together to keep the air out and it was working ok that way. i would have almost kept it that way and not ordered the elbow if i had known i was going to do the ram air conversion a few months later. i did get most of my money back on the elbow though, with the sale of the elbow and all the stock intake parts other than the MAF for $65 shipped. I think i got the elbow from summitt for $90 shipped.

 

I ordered a "polished" aluminum Granatelli elbow from JEGS. When I recieved it, it wasn't close to being polished. Looked more like "pot metal" I was kinda mad, but a buddy said just poilish it yourself so we did and it looks a bunch better. As far as the "heat soak" issue I guess I'll see how it does. Gonna do the TB bypass too.

 

Installed the intake elbow a couple days ago so I drove the car into work today about 10 miles. I opened the hood first thing to see how hot the elbow was and I could rest my hand on it. Not hot at all, not heat soaked in my opinion. The MAF sensor was warmer.

 

doesnt take long for mine to be hot as hell