Ram Air inlet location

[cgarb]

My Dad and I were talking about what things we could try and do to my race car this year and the idea of trying a ram air system was brought up. I run a flat hood on my car now with no scoop, I had a small scoop on the steel hood, but when my glass hood showed up I just put it on and never added the scoop. I have plenty of carb to hood clearance and it didn't seem to bother it any, the look kind of grew on me so I just left it as it is. He was watching pro stock, seeing that they took the scoops away and they are using some sort of ram air type set up he thought I would be neat to give it a try. Spectre offers a dual 4" inlet carb hat that I was looking at using to seal to the main body. My car is a Buick Skylark and the headlights are round, I am no expert on aerodynamics but, I was wondering if picking up air from the headlight area or from scoops low to the ground below the bumper would be better? Any experience or input is appreciated, Thanks

[MadBill]

Any bluff forward-facing surface on the front of the car will work, but the air is likely cleaner and cooler at headlight level, plus there will be fewer bends in the hoses. BTW, ram air is an inexpensive and worthwhile mod but 90% of the benefit will be from the cold air, not the ram pressure.

[cgarb]

I run methanol, I am not sure the cold air will help a bunch, maybe in the dead of summer. Methanol carb in the late fall seems to be the opposite in my experience, I've gotten back from runs and had ice on the intake runners. That's one reason we kept the flat hood, we were thinking in the late fall the cold air would be too much and the under hood heat would help keep some heat in the motor. The ram air will be nice because I could just take it off if need be.

[miniv8]

I bought a Spectre hat to blow through the other day, and while shopping for it I saw some of the buyer testimonies that warned there was a huge power loss running it like you describe.

[cgarb]

I was concerned about that myself. I though about fabricating a box of some sort myself instead of the hat. I didn't see the consumer reports but thanks for the heads up. Has anyone else done this with any success and have some design ideas to share?

[Kevin Johnson]

On my old third gen Camaro I fabricated a second snorkel and then used a full height lid and filter Each snorkel lead to a separate cool air source near the front grill. I got tired of looking for unobtanium oem dual snorkel setups in the wrecking yards.

[MadBill]

Recommended by Vizard, i'm sure there are may others: http://www.ramairbox.com/

[djh61187]

This is how I did mine. This is a Turbo blow thru carb setup, But could made to fit a ram air box just has easy. I used the inlet snorkels from Ram Air Box:
http://www.ramairbox.com/snorkels.html
The Aluminum ones on the top row.

[mag2555]

On GM cars with hidden wipers there is a large high pressure area at the base of the windshield so ducting off of the fire wall makes for only one U bend in the tubing most times and a lot less shit getting in to clog the filter as compared to pulling off the nose of the car.
Two old oval snorkels off of other air cleaner set ups are great to set into and tack weld / seal to the fire wall.