Project Fat Cad Update 1

Project Fat Cad Update 2

Project Fat Cad Update 3

Project Fat Cad Update 4

Project Fat Cad Update 5 

At Spectre Performance,
we not only design and build Spectre Cold Air Intake Kits for Classic Muscle
cars, we also make Spectre Modern Muscle Kits too.  One of the reasons I
bought the Cadillac is so we would be able to design a Spectre Intake kit for
it. The kit we built and will have available for sale shortly is a two stage
kit.

The base kit is a standard one for us – we dispense with the stock air box
and intake tube with all of the resonators built in to keep it quiet, and
replace it with a polished aluminum tube, a giant 6″ wide filter funnel
and a matching 6″ wide inlet air filter – but not just any ordinary air
filter, no, it’s a Speed By Spectre HPR Filter; The World’s Fastest Air
Filter – just like the filter we use in our Land Speed Race Car, the
Speed By Spectre Infidel, which has gone 415MPH on gasoline at the Bonneville
Salt Flats. It’s Cadillac powered as well, but that’s a whole ‘nuther story.

The Spectre Intake kit also includes an aluminum heat
shield that isolates the filter from the high underhood air temps and makes
sure it is fed nothing but cold ambient air.

I know, you’re thinking – ambient, huh? What if you’re
in Phoenix Arizona in August and it’s 120º outside – what’s so
cold about that?

Well, if you’re in Phoenix Arizona in August
– I’m sorry!  Try to stay indoors during the day. But, I’ll tell you what,
your engine would much rather inhale that 120º ambient air than have to suck on
the 240º air that’s under your hood! 

And that is a big part of what a Spectre Cold Air Intake
does for a car. The other part is to smooth out the intake tract making it
easier for the engine to inhale. The easier it is for an engine to draw in the
air it needs, the more power it will make. Simple.

What’s the downside? There are two we can think of; One,
our intake kit will make more noise – it’s aluminum, not plastic, and has no
sound muffling resonators built in – so when you press down on the Go pedal,
you’ll hear stuff you didn’t hear before.

And second, it’s not free, it costs money! However, once
you pay for it, the additional power is free for life.

So that’s the main part of the kit. There’s a second
component we call an under bumper ram-air kit. Like we do with our Pontiac GTO
and Shelby Mustang GT500 kits, this part of the kit converts the air inlet next
to the fog light into a ram air scoop that shoves cold air into the sealed off
filter area.

 The kit we added weighs 7.8 Lbs.
while the restrictive airbox and attendant plastic weighed 6.5 Lbs.
for a minor gain of 1.3 Lbs. I guess you would call this an auto-binge,
but it’s well worth it considering the power gain.

 On our chassis dyno the
Spectre Intake System with the Ram Air scoop provided a gain of 13 hp
and 19 Lb/Ft of torque.

The stock intake flowed 716 CFM on our
flowbench, while the Spectre kit flowed 1135 CFM at the exact
same pressure, a gain of 58.5% in airflow.

 Once installed, the car
headed off on the Hot Rod Magazine PowerTour – where it acted as our chase
vehicle from Cocoa Beach Florida all the way to Detroit.
Four days later it was in Nevada for the Second Annual Speed By
Spectre 341 Challenge.

There’s a ton of stuff written about that event (like THIS and THIS), which went
very well by the way – the Third Annual is already scheduled for June 15 – 17,
2012 –  We let four different journalists drive the wagon and the Spectre
CTS-V didn’t shame us. With the Ram Air scoop, the Cad posted the fastest time
ever for a station wagon with a blistering time of 3:39. OK, it’s probably the
only station wagon to ever run the hill, but still, 3:39 is hella fast for a
4,300 LB. station wagon.

Just wait till next year – she’ll be a svelte 3,800 Lb.
animal. I’m thinking, with proper tires and a little suspension tuning [ mainly
taking out the factory push that’s built into these cars ] we could look for a
sub 3:30 time….. 

 Next up, we lose more
weight. In the next blog we’ll see what those cast iron manifolds weigh
compared to headers, and we toss the windshield washer container and pump.