Air Intake Parts

Find the Air intake thats right for you:

Find the Air intake thats right for you:

First, it's helpful to understand the parts to the car's intake system. On many cars, the first part of the intake tract the incoming air encounters is a tube of some sort designed to channel cold air from behind the grille or inside the fenderwell into the engine.

Other cars lack this tube, and draw in hot air from under the hood. The air then passes into the air box or air cleaner; an air box is boxy shaped and usually found on fuel injected cars, while air cleaners look like overgrown tuna cans and are usually found on carbureted cars. Either one will contain an air filter to remove any incoming dirt, insects, and any other contaminants the air might have picked up off the road.

The next object the air is likely to encounter is either the carburetor or, on fuel injected cars, the throttle body. Some engines will have multiple carburetors, or rarely multiple throttle bodies. Either one contains a butterfly valve which controls the amount of incoming air allowed into the engine. Carburetors and some throttle bodies will add fuel to the incoming air at this point, while multi-port fuel injection systems add the fuel at a point further downstream. The throttle body or carburetor will be bolted onto a manifold, which distributes the air to the individual cylinders. Engines with multi-port fuel injection will have a set of fuel injectors bolted to the manifold near where it attaches to the cylinder heads, usually accompanied by a fuel rail, which is basically a fancy looking pipe which delivers fuel to the injectors.