Sup all. What would the best material be for an airbox in terms of keeping heat out and retaining coolness within the airbox? Carbon fiber or Aluminum? anyone?

 

oil fire fighters use corigated(spelling?) tin to shield themselves from heat...

 

Aluminium is by far the cheapest and easiest material to use. You can buy big sheets for very little money and it can by cut and bent using the tools most people have in their garage. If you have a proper cold air feed, the actual difference in intake air temp compared to using someting like fibreglass or carbon fibre would have a negligible effect, but if you want to can insulate it with foam rubber. That'd be more effective that fibreglass or carbon fibre anyway

 

just do what i did lol ... check the sig for a pic... i just got back from driving around town for an hour... no telling how many times i redlined it and was driving a bit harsh and my temp guage never went above 1/8 of the way... man i love it... theres a write up in the archive under my name... pm me if you want

 

Two layers with an air space between. I've always thought that would be pretty effective.

 

Aluminum Tape can make up for amature fabrication skills. Also seals it up better.

 

While I'm sure your intake is extremely effective, there's no way you can tell intake temp from coolant temp. The two have basically zero effect on each other.

 

ok now im confused as to why my temps went down so much after i did this mod then... i have done nothing to the coolant system on my car... my temp guage hardly ever reads 1/4 of the way when before with a completly stock engine it was always 1/4th or a bit higher... what would a logical explination be then? i naturally assumed because my intake temps were a bit cooler it must have made the temp go down.... though i know cooler air makes better combustion which would seem to make it hotter... what would you say caused my temp guage to drop so much as well with many other guys that i have talked to because they say they notice the same thing... .lower temps

 

oh wait nzconvertible.... i never said my intake temps were cooler which im sure they are.. i said my car ran cooler.... as in the coolant tem didnt go up so much

 

I can't really give you a logical explanation to be honest, but I think there's more to it that just your new intake. To make something's temp increase you need to add heat energy. It takes more than four times the energy input to get the same temp increase in water (coolant) as it does in air. So you would need to add (or in your case not add) a lot of heat via the intake air to affect coolant temp. Also, the coolant is heated by waste heat from combustion taking place at a couple of thousand degrees. Even really hot engine bay air is only going to be ~160degF.

I think you'd need to do back-to-back testing on the same day using a proper temp guage before you could say for sure. I certainly wouldn't be recommending cold air intakes as a solution for overheating anyway.