More accurately it's called a "short ram intake". At least - the way I've seen most people do it on TracKicks. I've been considering a few different intake ideas:
* Making a fiberglass ram air intake on the driver's side 1/4 panel
* Hood scoop intake
(Both of these make the engine more vonrable to hydro lock. The short-ram inside the engine compartment offers some protection, but probably not much more.)
* I'd REALLY love to move the intake to the pass side. Having the intake run over the hot headers is a piss poor design.

A snorkel is a true CAI, and arguably a ram-air intake (if the intake is pointed forward). People that have done it have reported positive seat-of-the-pants dyno 'numbers'. The only problem I have is the ARB snorkel is $$$, and a lot of the home-brew setups look a little too ghetto-fab for my tastes.

When moving your filter try your local exhaust shop they should be able to bend/route tube any way you could imagine. Most even have stainless if you dont want to paint. Agreed pvc snorkels are getto.

More accurately it's called a "short ram intake".

Well, any intake on a tracker is going to be relatively short

I consider this a true "short ram"

copy/paste
http://www.rlb.50megs.com/graphics/trkk&nfilter.jpg

Agreed pvc snorkels are getto.

X2

I am looking into running something like this on my 87 Samurai, I bought a cone air filter and was planning on just connecting in place of the stock air box. But had a couple questions. I took a pic and drew arrows to what I am wondering about.

The top arrow is pointing to some sort of vent tube? Do I need this? The lower arrow is to a hose that runs to the right and to the heat shield on the header, What is this for? It seems almost like it is piping hot air into the intake. Thanks for your help.

Both of those bits work together. When the engine is cold, it does draw air from over the headers. This helps the engine warm up faster - which is a good thing, but not "needed" (unless you live in a SMOG nazzi state). If I were to do another Samurai, I'd just delete that stuff, and figure out a way to do a CAI / ram intake from the filter box to the grill area.

Ok that is kinda what I was thinking. So would it work to just put on the cone filter right where it connects to the air box? And are the little hoses just sensors to help bring in heated air when needed?

They bring in warm air as needed. They're not called sensors... maybe vacuum operated switches? Sensors just... sense things, those actually do things (operate a little flap in there). Anyway, you'll need to figure out how to get the bigger hose to plug into the system too, it's the PVC that vents the crank case. And plug those vacuum lines. I wonder if just deleting the hardware from the elbow that comes off the air box out would improve things?

Ok just to get this straight as far as what your explaining. So arrow 1 is the crank case vent? and arrow 2 is the elbow you think I could just take out and then plug the vacuum lines and run it like that.

Yes. If you want to get real creative, you can try to figure out a way to run a new line (after elbow & junk is deleted) that goes to the front grill somewhere to suck in cold air. I honestly have no idea how much that's really going to help in a 1.3L, but it would be interesting to try.

Just an observation from your pic: I see there is a bit of rust on the seam of the steel housing atop your carb (tbi?). I'd take that off & inspect carefully inside, to be sure there's no rust flecks chipping off & getting sucked into your engine! m2c

Fuzz

Just an observation from your pic: I see there is a bit of rust on the seam of the steel housing atop your carb (tbi?). I'd take that off & inspect carefully inside, to be sure there's no rust flecks chipping off & getting sucked into your engine! m2c

Fuzz

Hey thanks!! Hadn't really thought of that, but very good point. I will check it out.

Well, any intake on a tracker is going to be relatively short

I consider this a true "short ram"

copy/paste
http://www.rlb.50megs.com/graphics/trkk&nfilter.jpg

Haha, I had something like that on my old civic for a while...

...and on my old Tracker, I cut an old Civic intake in half for it...
yes, that's electrical tape holding the filter together 

i swiss cheesed my stock box till i get a chance to build something ,it works ok. a high flow filter would help some more.