Celica Forums General Discussion Exterior neat article on the AEM bypass valve

http://www.sportcompactcarweb.com/tech/0104scc_tested/

some people say the bypass valve does not worke for our cars since the aem Intake does not have a striaght enough piping for it to work...judge for yourself

pretty cool find

the pipe they were testing with is pretty damn long,way too much room for the water to stop sucking in compare to CAI for our cars.i think ima just get SRI n not worry about a thing because you never know what might happen.

^^^ good point that point was wayyy too long..




still doesn't prove much but interesting find

And it will only work if you are completely submerged. Otherwise a good enough vacuum is not created to make it work. I don't for a minute believe an Intake has to be completely submerged before it will suck water up.

true. but the water was measured to go up 18 inches...that's still longer than the celi aem Intake.

btw-i thought you had an aem Intake...

what happened was i bought both aem CAI n injen SRI. i wanted to install just one of them n sell the other.i was thinking about putting in SRI but i decided to put on aem CAI n sell SRI.im willing to sell the SRI for pretty cheap since i only have the piping for it.

is the test done by aem??? if so wouldnt they be biased on there product and not report any errors that happend??
also as mentioned that pipe is way too long for it to suck in water.
btw did you guys find it funny that they rather test and destroy a nsx engine rather than a beat up neon or something

interesting

I have the aem Intake, but i don't have the bypass valve. I live in a tropical island and here rains a lot, i have a damn voice in my head that says " get the bypass valve " but i don't.

I don't really have the proper tools to cut right the Intake and don't know who can do that job for me.

Don't know the chances of getting a hydrolock.

Thats an OLD article...

In a real world no air filter will be completely submerged and stay like that for long periods of time. It will splash in and out of water and this is when an engine will hydrolock. It doesn't take an Intake full of water to hydrolock an engine, it takes a teaspoon of water in a cylinder to cause hydrolock.

This represents a true street application:


Now imagine this on a street car where you don't have a giant vertical pipe protecting the engine, you have a lot less height difference when the Intake is in the car. AEM bypass valve is just a make believe bandaid for a poor Intake design by AEM, also another way for them to make more money.

If the valve really did work, why wouldn't WRC cars use it? Because it doesn't work.

well it peaked my interest because at full throttle (and i doubt our celis suck harder than a 250whp nsx) the water rose 18 inches. isn't the aem piping for our car longer than that?

plus i thought it took more than a teaspoon to hydrolock a car. i thought the general consensus was that small tricklets of water are negligible

It's the elevation change (positive head) of the water, not the total distance travelled down a pipe.

Tricklets of water is less than a teaspoon...FYI I run water injection on my race car so I know a thing or two about an engine consuming water.

i'm not questioning your knowledge. just getting my facts straight so that others would know as well. it seems a teaspoon is a little low to get hydrolocked. many people have driven in really heavy rain and most have said the filter has to be totally submereged to get hydro locked.

i can see what you mean by elevation change...that seems to make sense

Well on a 1.8L engine with a compression ratio of 11.5:1...if you get 39.1cc of water in a cylinder you will have 0 room for any air/fuel. So that's 7.9 teaspoons...but you can hydrolock an engine on less than 7.9 teaspoons, but maybe not 1 teaspoon like I originally stated. But none the less it doesn't take much water to bend a connecting rod, blow a headgasket or cause other internal engine damage.

FYI your filter doesn't need to be 100% submerged to hydrolock, it's easier to believe that though. But with it partially submerged the Intake air velocity will help draw up water quickly into the combustion chambers, while as a fully submerged filter takes more time to draw up a large volume of water filling up the Intake pipe.

that's interesting. makes sense. so are guys who run when it's raining safe or not? what do you suggest for CAI users/intake users?

They are safe if they have adequate shielding around their filter and don't drive around thinking their cars are submarines.

Best suggestion I'd have for a CAI Intake setup? I'd cut the Intake a few feet from the throttle body, put a filter on the end of it. Then build a box around the filter and duct cold air to it, NOT FROM THE GROUND. Duct it from as high above the ground as possible. This will yield colder air and be 100x safer than a "cold" air Intake.

Leave the stock airbox on; the cost, the labour putting it on, the minimal gains & the risk isn't worth it.

The stock airbox has a low velocity chamber which slows the incoming air which causes water & dust to drop out before it reaches the filter. And the stock airbox is a CAI.

a CAI is essential for a gts. an aem Intake and trd exhaust set up has been known to give peak10+whp...

that some interesting shit to read !!!

But a panel filter has less surface area than a cylindrical or cone filter. Larger surface area means a smaller pressure drop, thus more power. Besides the OEM Intake piping is fairly restrictive.

But don't get me wrong I'd take an OEM Intake system over a CAI anyday. But the best setup is a short "ram" with an airbox around the filter and air ducted to it from as high above the ground as possible. If WRC cars and many other forms of motorsports are doing it...why isn't the majority of modified street cars doing the same? Seems odd to me...but then a CAI has a deeper sound than a short "ram" I guess.