L98 cold air intake or home made ram air?

[medicineman]

http://www.corvettebuyers.com/c4vettes/performance.htm is telling me, "The problem is, in an L98 engine, coolant is passed through the intake manifold after it has passed through the block and in varying degrees the intake manifold is going to heat the cylinder's input air up regardless of what you do to the air before it gets to the intake. (This is not true in the LT1 or LT4. It goes through the intake manifold first)". So....cold air is pretty much useless (and if I must say...pretty ugly too) so why not ram air? Non-existant. about to build my own intake. A nice polished aluminium pipe topped off with a k&n cone filter, and locate it far enough away from the engine so that the air doesn't get too hot.

Either way, I'll be increasing the airflow (already done the snipping of the stock air box), and honestly, I think it would look better than the nasty black plastic thing that passes for an intake pipe anyways.

so whats your take? of course I'll do the port and polish of the intake, possibly spring for a better one (I've seen a few that look pretty good). Relocating the air temperature sensor...sure, why not? Need to work on the MAF anyways, it's throwing some weird codes at me. 33 and 12. I'm going to clean things and look around and see what's up. Alright, well thanks for listening.
-j

[fartbubbles]

ok this is a fairly old thread but i've had some experience right here. im sure you've figured out that the intake manifold on your l98 is EXTREMELY restrictive. its down right made for a 305! the long runners provide a nice amount of torque at about 3k rpm but it chokes right afterwards.

all depending on your budget... you could simply create yourself a ram air box right near the air dam for a few ponies. you could port/polish the tb/manifold and buy larger runners for a bit more.. but still not changing the manner of the motor. your torque curve will still be fairly low, just larger. OR you can dig deep and buy one of the many intake/tb/manifold/plenum combos out there. I went with the HSR and it totally brought my car to life. I ended up netting 30 rwhp (with tune), losing 10 rwtq, but the car pulled until 6k. the torque curve was flat, and the power curve peaked at 4800. I know the HSR is virtually impossible to fit under a c4 hood, but you could either get a cowl or find an alternative intake.