March 29, 2013 8:00 am Look under the hood of any vehicle built after 1990 and you’ll notice one thing in common: They all have an intake system that pulls air from a fender well or from the front of the core support, supplying the engine with fresh, cool air for maximum power and efficiency. Because cool air is denser than warm air, which means there is more oxygen packed into every square inch. The higher the oxygen content, the more powerful and efficient your engine will be with every stroke of a piston. Cooler intake air becomes a denser charge, which equals more tire-churning power. Most classic street machine owners rarely give a second thought to slapping a 14-inch round open air cleaner on top of their carburetor and calling it a day. Between your oversize radiator, headers and all those hoses, the air temperature under the hood of your muscle car can spike as high as 220 F on a hot summer day! The team at Spectre Performance in Ontario, California, decided cold air intakes shouldn’t be relegated strictly to the late-model crowd, so they designed a series of intake systems for classic Chevy muscle cars.

The principal is simple: Pull cool air from outside the engine compartment and feed it directly into the engine in the smoothest way possible. Spectre offers a variety of intake systems for Camaro, Chevelle, El Camino, Impala, Nova and more. The RacePak system looks like it was lifted off a ‘64 Ford Thunderbolt race car: a round filter in a big spun aluminum can with two intake tubes running to the front of the engine compartment. Coleman Furnace Parts 7900 SeriesThe PowerPak and TrackPak systems use a hat on top of the carburetor that pulls air either from the fenders or from the corners of the engine compartment that have been isolated from the heat with laser-cut heat shields. Bighorn Atv Tires SpecsAll three systems are easy to bolt in with hand tools. Hampton Bay Lighting Fixtures Instructions

The systems make impressive power gains, as they can drop inlet air temperature by as much as 100 F on a hot summer day. The more powerful your engine (and therefore the more air it requires, since engines are basically big air pumps) the more it is affected by inlet air temperature. Here are some examples. Ever wonder why your car feels so much faster on cold winter mornings than on hot summer afternoons? The more power you make the more your engine is affected by the density (temperature) of the air. Cooler, denser air means more oxygen is packed into the combustion chamber on every compression stroke of the piston. The more powerful the engine, the greater the improvement in power. A 500-hp engine can see a 100-hp gain from a 110 F inlet air temp drop. But even a modest 30 F inlet air temp drop picks up 24 hp and 25 lb-ft of torque! We followed along as Spectre installed an intake on an early Camaro powered by a standard small-block Chevy. The entire process took less than an hour, and we were on the road and making more power.

Every Spectre ProFab intake uses a high-flow, reuseable hpR air filter element that is backed by an unlimited lifetime warranty fed by mandrel-bent aluminum intake tubes, and includes all necessary brackets, adapters and hardware. 1720 S. Carlos Ave. Ontario, CA 91761 , 3.5 out of 5 based on 2 ratingsStandard equipment on the Corvair Corsa and available at extra cost on both the Monza and Corvair 500 series, the 140 engine (140 HP @ 5200 RPM) was fitted with a normally aspirated induction system with four individual single-barrel Rochester carburetors breathing through a The engine also featured high performance cylinder heads (yielding a higher compression ratio) and discrete dual exhaustIt's interesting to note that the 140 horsepower engine, when mated to the Powerglide transmission, used the same camshaft at the 95 hp engine, and when mated to a manual transmission, it was equipped with the same cam as the 110 hp engine. When ordering the 140 in a Corsa with a 4-speed manual

transmission, you also got a short-throw shifter. 140 HP, air-cooled, 6 cylinder Of course, we'd never condone stoplight racing, but it's a fact, in the mid-60s, the combination of a 2400 pound Corvair with a properly set up 140 could easily get the jump on a wheel-spinning muscle car at the lights. This was due to excellent weight transfer to the rear wheels. This is a top view of the Corvair engine showing the horizontally-opposed array of cylinders flanking the crankcase. Corvair engines use the same firing order. The number one cylinder is the one closest to the distributor (D) on the passenger side of the car; information to have at hand if you do your own tune-ups. Over the years the 140 Corvair engine has picked up somewhat of a reputation for dropped valve seats. heads are aluminum, so the seats, which have to be of a harder material, are According the Bob Galli, of the Virtual 'Vairs (VV) Internet e-mail discussion group, using valve seats that are stepped

on the outside diameter (OD) might be a sure cure for 140s. recommended to him by Corvair engine guru Richard Finch. A company that makes custom stepped valve seats is the Tucker Valve Seat Company. Tucker Valve Seat Company Another knowledgeable contributor to Virtual 'Vairs, Ed Corson of Corson's Classic Corvairs, believes a permanent fix for dropped valve seats involves taking your heads to a good aluminum head shop to have all the valve seats replaced with deep seats, and he points out that these same seats are used in Porsche heads and some VW heads. Ed recommends the shop listed at right, one which he's been doing business with for at least 23 years. According to Ed, Fumio Fukaya arrived at California's Riverside Race Track about 30 years ago with a Japanese race team that raced a car with an all aluminum engine. When the team folded, he opened a shop in Riverside, where he would build/repair only aluminum head engines.

"He is so good and well known around the country and in racing circles," Ed told me, "that heads are sent to him for repair or remanufacture from all over the U.S. and Canada. I feel very fortunate to be located here where I was able to learn of him and get to know him. become very good friends and business acquaintances. I highly recommend him forYou can call him or send heads to him at the address and number listed, or if you would rather send them through me, contact me at Corson's 16953 Mockingbird Canyon Rd, "A set of heads usually takes about 3 weeks to be completely redone with new deep seats and silicon/bronze valve guides. recommend you disassemble the heads and clean them yourself, which will save youI also recommend that you not send him your valves, but replace them with new ones. After all if you are going to put that much effort into a set of heads you might just as well do it right." The Virtual Vairs e-mail discussion