A racing intake has to do more than hold a filter. The real job is managing the air coming through the nose so it can cool the truck and feed the engine at the same time. Our Ram-Air layout puts the filters in the front plenum, below the panel, so incoming air is captured in that volume instead of getting lost underhood. That air passes through the radiator and charge air coolers, then supplies the engine with filtered air under pressure. As speed goes up, ram pressure at the nose goes up with it. That means more air mass available to the intake and more heat pulled through the cooling stack before the 3.8L Whipple compresses the charge further. That is the point of Ram-Air, and it is how we have approached race-truck intake design for decades.
One of the major remaining packaging challenges is the truck’s airbox. Gale looks to earlier Banks race vehicles, including the Type R and road-race truck, where the air filters were positioned inside the front plenum rather than in a conventional underhood location.
In this arrangement, the filter sits beneath a panel inside the front plenum.
The entire nose of the vehicle effectively becomes a controlled air volume, capturing incoming air before distributing it to the cooling and induction systems.
Air enters through the front opening and fills the plenum before supplying several systems.
The same incoming airflow serves the engine radiator, charge-air cooler 1, charge-air cooler 2, and the engine intake. This allows the nose airflow to function as one integrated system rather than separating cooling and induction into unrelated paths.
A major advantage is the ability to supply the engine with filtered air under pressure.
As vehicle speed increases, incoming air creates pressure within the front plenum. Preserving that pressure through the intake path improves the conditions at the engine airbox.
This is the basis of the Ram-Air concept.
Forward vehicle speed creates pressure at the nose, and a properly designed intake system captures and preserves that pressure rather than drawing exclusively from the underhood environment.
The engine therefore receives filtered intake air while taking advantage of the pressure generated by the vehicle’s movement.
Gale describes this front-plenum Ram-Air approach as a long-standing Banks racing practice dating back to 1960.
The principle remains the same: capture air at the nose, manage it efficiently for cooling and induction, and deliver filtered air to the engine while preserving available ram pressure.
