I was just wondering if there are any major differences between a a fenderwell cold air intake and an engine compartment cold air intake; aside from the obvious. Any pro's/con's of each would be greaty appreciated...can't seem to find a whole lot on the comparison.

PS-this would be for a 1987 5.0L GT

 

Fender-well gets true cold air (like the factory airbox does) wheras the engine-bay one gets hot engine air, so its not a true CAI.

 

I kind of figured that the fender well intake would be the better way to go for cold air for that reason: engine bays are hot.

 

Depends what you've got, my Cobra had a K&N engine bay CAI, it had a sheild around the filter. On my '93 I've just got a cone filter for which I had a piece of stainless made up to enclose it in the engine compartment to keep it cold. The fenderwell style can sometimes cause problems with the MAF, but on an '87 unless you've converted it to mass-air, you've really got nothing to worry about. I personally don't like the chrome piping up to the intake-it seems to really retain a lot of heat.

 

one diff between the fenderwell one and just the filter would be teh bend comming from out of the fender.
the other would be a "straight shot" type...+les turbulance..
right?

 

^Yeah that's why they don't always work well on mass-air cars, the meter works better with a straight shot of air, the bend isn't too beneficial to airflow either, they look cool though, nice and chrome!

 

Neither is the stock "curogated" upper tube............no better than the big bend in the fenderwell stuff.

Jay Allen recommends the AFM Powerpipe.

His advice is good enough for me.

 

Thanks a lot for the help guys. I'm definately going to go with the AFM CAI

 

True but the less bends the better, why have an extra 1 or 2 bends when you don't have to? I've heard nothing bad about the AFM, but I would just run an open element with a heat shield.

 

I would think that the air coming from inside the fender would still be cooler than the air that the element gets, even with the heat shield.