Hopefuly a newish topic!! Ram Air.

Would it be possible to do a ram air system on the SVS?

There are the two intakes on the front piece of the fairing in front of the indicators.

With the tank raised slightly does anyone think it would be possible to run sealed tubes to the airbox?

Would the airbox have to be sealed as well?

Would it even be worth doing? What do people think the possible gains would be?

And....................discuss!!

[northwind]

There was a guy on SV Rider who had a custom ram air setup, he thought it did him some good... He'd fitted a lambda sensor and real-time mix gauge so he had the capacity to check the effect, I suppose. I'm kind of skeptical myself, but in all honesty I don't know.

if you ride wide open in 6th gear most of the time it may help little

Doesn't the bike need to be doing something like 80+mph for these systems to have any real effect?

Originally Posted by sinbad

Doesn't the bike need to be doing something like 80+mph for these systems to have any real effect?

even than question is how effective it is due to design.

[yorkie_chris]

Well from bernoullis equation for a perfect fluid, if the intake was a stagnation point, i.e at the front of the bike where air is at the same speed as the bike then the actual pressure would only be 0.00424377bar (gauge), as you can see quite insignificant. (at 60mph)

It's all about the design of the scoop and duct, which someone I know is doing a thesis on, they're using some pretty hardcore CFD models to actually predict how these will behave.
From what I understand the main complication is actually decellerating the incoming fluid without massive frictional losses.
And remember the actual bhp gain needs to overcome the extra pressure and parasitic drag caused by the scoop, remembering that top speed with respect to power is a cube relationship (double speed = 8x power)
And that a ram air system is going to be a pain to set up as you cant reproduce 120mph airflow on a dyno.

Not as simple as it looks to get any meaningful gain, though an SRAD curvy would be cool

and size of airbox.

[yorkie_chris]

Yup yet another variable as every time an intake valve closes you get a pulse of backpressure, letting this pulse bounce off some part of the airbox or even the carb venturi at the right moment so it returns to the valve before it next closes can give even more power.
This is used in the form of tuned intake runners on a lot of engines.

IIRC some bikes now have variable length runners to get some of this advantage into the midrange

that is why I run flatslides and no air box.
dont have to worry about which way air will come in.

[yorkie_chris]

Back to the original post...

Originally Posted by Jester666

There are the two intakes on the front piece of the fairing in front of the indicators.

With the tank raised slightly does anyone think it would be possible to run sealed tubes to the airbox?

Would the airbox have to be sealed as well?

Would it even be worth doing? What do people think the possible gains would be?

Yes you could make some sealed tubes
Yes the airbox would benefit from being sealed, probably better to use a custom airbox with some pod filters inside the airbox
you would also have to make sure any carb ventilation goes to inside the airbox, otherwise they won't suck any fuel
And that the vacuum operated fuel pump will supply enough pressure to feed the carbs

I doubt you would see much gain compared to the cost and complexity.

If I was doing it I'd say the first step would be to block off one of those ducts, mount a pressure transducer and see how much actually builds with no flow.