CAI material -polymer vs aluminum?

[Man with no name]

Which material is better for intake piping?

My guess would be aluminum piping, sort of like the ones you see in ebay for every car (except of course, daewoos )

But I was surprised when reading an old topic about the 360 dynamics intake for the leganza. According to the post the intake was made of "high quality polymer" which was supposedly better at dissipating heat than aluminum (or something like that...). From what I understood, this intake was made of spectre performance modular tubing and sold for over a hundred bucks.

So which is really better? I bought a spectre intake from ebay for like 25 bucks shipped including a new filter, but to be honest I think the polymer gets hot as hell and want to replace it with an aluminum one... so why would 360 dynamics use this material instead of aluminum?

[PrecisionBoost]

That is a simple one... the air entering your Cold Air Intake is colder than the hot air in your engine bay ( which is the whole reason for putting in a CAI in the first place )

Aluminum is an extreemly effective conductor of heat.... so therefore it soaks up the heat from the engine bay and transfers it to the air that is inside the CAI.

There is lots of air moving through the CAI so in effect the air inside the CAI ends up cooling the alumium pipe (which is the transfer of heat to the air inside the CAI )

The reason a plastic intake will feel hotter on the outside is because it is a good insluator..... and therefore is not transfering heat to the air inside the pipe.... and the air inside the pipe is not cooling the outside down like it does with the aluminum.

So if the outside feels hot.... that's good.... it means that the pipe is not tranfering heat to the intake charge and is therfore not being cooled off.



The spectre pipe was simple to put together... which is why 360 Dynamics got into it.... plus it went together seamlessly..... unlike an aluminum one with silicone joints where the diameter goes up and down creating turbulance.

Personally..... my ideal intake pipe is a fibreglass "sock" type of intake..... it's a molded one piece unit that is perfectly smooth inside and there is absolutely no change in diameter.

Fibreglass is a polymer just like plastic.... most of the time Polyester resin is used to fix the glass fibers into place.

It's a very good inslulator just like plastic.