Hi guys,

As you may know, Hondata has the ECU reflash as well as the ECU unit + reflash. I've seen how minimal the HP gains were when Hondata dyno'd their RDX reflashed + Cpe CAI.

So I'm wondering how many owners here would NOT do CAI for their setup and if you have any reasons please list them as well.

I'm leaning towards No CAI because of it's low HP gains when paired of reflash as well as increased noise from engine area. (We all know how "quiet" the RDX engine area is ) Just Hondata +Atlp(when that finalizes).

Thanks guys!

 

main reason why i didnt end up ordering the CAI, well i did but cancelled it..... hondata is where its at. the cold air, id rather skip any future problem (car throwing a code, dealer getting pissed or denying work) and stick with Hondata...its the easiest upgrade and the biggest upgrade for gains.

im not saying the CPE isnt without merit....all im saying is for 600 you get a much more involved and better upgrade and alot easier to get it past a dealer for serivce. i dont doubt cpe's dyno with the huge numbers they said they got...but from hondatas info..it looks like the CAI did next to nothing.

 

main reason why i didnt end up ordering the CAI, well i did but cancelled it..... hondata is where its at. the cold air, id rather skip any future problem (car throwing a code, dealer getting pissed or denying work) and stick with Hondata...its the easiest upgrade and the biggest upgrade for gains.

im not saying the CPE isnt without merit....all im saying is for 600 you get a much more involved and better upgrade and alot easier to get it past a dealer for serivce. i dont doubt cpe's dyno with the huge numbers they said they got...but from hondatas info..it looks like the CAI did next to nothing.

 

Yup. I read that thread about CAI throwing a code and messing up the whole car. That's another reason why I'm skeptical about getting a CAI for the RDX. At least Hondata now offers a separate ECU unit which I can just switch back and forth if I need to leave my RDX with the dealer.

 

I have no ordered one simply because of dealer hassle. I don't have Hondata either, but I am looking at it hopefully soon.

I did a K&N drop in and removed the silencer. The airbox grabs air from right behind the headlight, so it should be decent. Even when I go the dealer, I swap in the stock filter to avoid any hassle. There is always some guy trying to pretend the brand of windshield washer fluid I'm using will void my warranty or something lame.

 

geez.. that's the first time hearing that... different brand of windshield washer fluid huh... haha. People these days are just looking for any excuse to NOT help US the consumers.

I'm thinking of getting the hondata plug and play soon as well. I'll most definitely post pics of it!

 

I'm just making up hypotheticals. I want the Hondata, but I'm too busy to make the phone call.

 

The gains are not woth the noise, IMO. I might just throw in a K&N, Dremel out the "supporting grid" on the top piece of the intake box to smooth the flow, and take out the silencer. What I do want is the full turbo back from ATLP.

 

Can you give some details on what exactly you did to the stock air filter body, such as "removing the silencer"?

 

Boys, I can tell you there is definitely more noise with the CP-E (sounds like Darth Vader on meth). I did the CP-E before I did the reflash - I noticed an immediate difference in driveability plus an upward nudge in mpg when I wasn't squeezing Darth.

After the reflash, even more heat under the hood and not too concerned about what the dealer might say about the beauty CP-E hardware in the engine bay. No codes being thrown. I think it looks killer and usually techs are highly interested in stuff they can pass along to other gearheads. I've done mod work on other Acuras/Hondas with no dealer hassle.

That being said, I too am interested in what SinCity and cwepruk are talking about. Pics please!

 

The CP-E intake hasn't thrown a CEL; I believe that was the Weapon R intakes that did.

Also you guys should read up on the Magnusson Moss Act. The dealer has to prove the part you installed caused the problem. Do you know how many thousands of TL, CL, TSX, etc members have bought cold air intakes and still maintained their warranty? And that is just Acura. And the dealer would be more likely to void a warranty based on an ECU mod than a piping and filter mod.

 

i dont know if this count but i had hondata about 2 weeks and cpe about a week.. so far no error codes.. the first night driving with the cp-e, didnt think i notice that much of increase. but yesterday i wanted to test if the power was there, so i reinstall my stock and it felt slower (Maybe in my mind). then reinstall cai tested it again and the power was there for sure.. wasnt to much, but you still felt the little increase. and thats good enough for me
i hope this helps

 

Thanks for all the replies guys!

I'm sure we got more members out there that have CAI in their RDX.

We gotta make this community more active! hoorah!

 

ROGER THAT~!

 

I have the Weapon R CAI with the 3" tubing and it works great, a friend of mine has the CP-E and we ran side by side. Both cars were equal interms of highway speed and stomping into the pedal at traffic lights, additionally average MPG is the same. The only difference is I spent around $175 and free shipping and he spent around $300.

 

did the weapon R screw with the MAF sensor like CPE did

 

Still haven't seen a pic of the Weapon R installed.

 

Well at first the one with the 2.75" MAF housing did, but I contacted Weapon R and they sent me a replacement with the 3" MAF housing in a timely manner and sent a shipping label to return the one with the 2.75".

I would like to post pic but how do I do that

 

anybody has video comparison of CP-E CAI vs Weapon R intake? We all know how the CP-E sounds like, I wonder if the Weapon R sounds a little different. Also, which one adds the most engine noise?

Thanks!

 

Don't have pics as I haven't done it yet. But if you pull off the top piece from the airbox (the piece with the MAF), you will notice there is supporting gridwork to reinforce the top piece. The gridwork could create turbulence/impede airflow to smoothly flow up towards the MAF. Doing so may also weaken the airbox so proceed with caution. However, the airbox feels quite sturdy.

What Cwepruk was talking about is that there is a resonator that attaches in front of the airbox to reduce noise. You could also remove that to remove restriction. I believe when you remove that, you will be able to hear more of the intake and DV. Also, some people may go to the extent of "swiss cheesing" the bottom of their airbox to allow more air in.

Another thing I would like to look into is replacing the accordion elbow with some aluminum pieces joined by silicone couplers.

 

I'd like to seem some pics, please.

 

How do I do that...seriously I have the pics but for some reason my account setting don 't allow me to upload pics

 

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That strange. you just have to host them on anothr site and then post the link here. I use photobucket.

 

I sent you a PM Dan. Email me the pics and I'll post em.

 

Can anyone with either intake port pre and post average mpg numbers?

 

I was getting 17-20 pre, now 20-24 post. That's in normal driving minus the frequent lead boot when the hardware was initially installed. Figure about 10-15% mpg gain.

 

I never liked the foam that weapon R uses for the filters, I had one before and eventually the foam started to come apart and got sucked into my intake manifold on my old civic.

 

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the curved radius section of the accordion flex hose is actually a flat surface to aid in airflow when hitting the corner. Now I wonder how much of a difference will adding a silicone hose make in terms of smoothing out the airflow into the turbo?

 

Anyone else have numbers? If others get gains like this, even if the power increase in very small, the added turbo noise and MPG gain should make this worth it. If nothing else, it will pay for itself in the MPG area.

 

You can justify it if you like the noise, but you're not getting any significant measurable power or MPG. These people are just kidding themselves.

 

Know what, Bulb? I can live without the intake noise. The power has been measured and is graphed. The mpg comes from the log I keep so I challenge your remark. "Significant measurable" sounds like a nonsense remark from some flaming poster. Find a reason other than your uninformed opinion to make your disparaging comment.

I'll give you a freebie to work on: what's the cost/benefit of spending $300+ on a CAI to get a 10-15% mileage increase? At today's prices for premium, based on the average EPA for the RDX, how many miles would one have to drive to break even on their investment?

Now you can Be Happy.

 

with mixed city/highway we get 22-23 before it was 20.

 

I just ordered one so I'll report back when it comes in! Was it difficult to install?

 

It's a piece of cake to install and I have very limited mechanical skills. Good luck.

I've seen about a 2 mpg increase since installing the cp-e intake. I've had it since Feb. and about 7000 miles and it hasn't thrown any codes or check engine lights. I've also had it to the dealer 2 times for service and they don't have a problem with it.

 

WOW! Let me see if I can't clean some of this confusion up...

In a word: YES. They set a check engine light!! That right there tells you they changed something, and not in the right way.

I tried my best to explain exactly how sensitive MAF housings are to diameter changes, but I STRONGLY recommend you folks go back and re-read this post. We explain in great detail what goes into our products, and why we make them the way we do. I promise you the extra time and effort we put into our products is not for naught:

https://acurazine.com/forums/showpos...9&postcount=55

This part in particular is what I'm referring to, written 7/9/07:

Believe it or not, it sounds like the WeaponR intake runs even leaner than our intake. How do I know? Because your resulting fuel trims are going to be dependent upon the MAF housing diameter. Considering that the WeaponR now uses a larger MAF housing than us (3" versus 2.XXX"), it's probably safe to say that the intake will also make the car run leaner than our product.

Let's just be logical about this folks. WeaponR sent out an intake with a standard 2.75" pipe, but it ended up setting a check engine light. But why? Because the MAF was too small which speeds up airflow velocity past the MAF sensor. This 'tricks' the computer into thinking that there's more airflow going into the engine than there actually is. Now, the ECU will try to compensate for this discrepancy, but it can only compensate so much, and that's when it'll trigger a CEL: When it can no longer trim fuel back to a stoich mixture. So what'd they do? They swtiched to the next size larger standard pipe size, which is 3". Quick and easy fix.

So how significant is a jump of 0.25"? Very significant actually. When we tested the proper MAF housing diameter to replicate stock fuel trims (NOTE: which is not the stock diameter!), we enlarged the housing by another 1/32" in order to lean the RDX out the way we did. So if a change of 1/32" was enough to lean the RDX out slightly, imagine what a change of 1/4" does

And this is exactly why our intake costs more than the competition: We don't use standard round pipe to make our MAF housing; instead we spin them on a CNC lathe to tolerances of +/- 0.002". We could significantly reduce the cost of our intake if we used standard sized pipe instead of the billet aluminum we currently use, but then we would lose the precision required to properly dial in these vehicles. So please understand whereas our competition just sent their customers a standard 3" pipe for their MAF housing, we took the time to measure the proper diameter and then machine them from billet aluminum.

So I'd encourage anyone with a WeaponR intake to go get dyno tested or hooked up to a wideband. I think you may be surprised how lean the car runs.


That's a pretty unfair statement considering all of the supporting empirical data and customer testimonials don't you think? Maybe you'd like to elaborate a little so that we can start a discussion instead of simply saying that we're wrong. That isn't very informative or useful for the people reading this thread.



And I'm going to echo Excelerate's statement. If you believe that modding your RDX is going to automatically void your warranty, I've got another wonderful article for you guys to read:

http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/Dumm...t.id-2669.html

 

My way is Hondata ECU + K&N 33-2382 drop (has already installed both), but in case I'd buy CAI it'd surely be (1000%) the CP-E one. I like their attention & experience.

 

All the empirical data I've seen is a manufacturer-supplied dyno that looks pretty fishy, considering how low the baseline numbers are, and much more relevant, another one from the Hondata comparison in conjunction with the reflash showing barely any gains of significance, and even less within normal RPM driving ranges.

 

If you do the cold air...CPE without question.

my question is, for CPE, the dyno's for your CAI and Hondata's run with it...why the difference and what are your thoughts about that. Yours is tremendously high, and their's is very minimal (alot of people consider this more 'normal'). You mind shedding some light on here to clear it up. I don't doubt the work that you guys do, or how you go about doing it (you've made that pretty clear to all of us) but something is obviously askew.

 

This second version is much better than the first, thank you.

I'm just trying to understand your position, so please bear with me. So, you think that our dyno is fishy because the numbers look low? Compared to what? You do realize that interia dynos like the one we tested on is not a traceable measurement tool? That means like a thermometer, or a watch, there's no check standard to compare our results to. So if you run your car on three different DynoJet dynos, you'll likely get three very different numbers.

Case in point, here is a quote from one of our MazdaSPEED3 customers. He drove all the way down from Canada to meet us and get tuned at the same shop that did the RDX dyno testing for us.

http://www.mazdaspeedforums.org/foru...any-forum.html

So how does a difference of ~30whp sound to you? On the Extreme Motorsports DynoJet he made 292whp/325tq, and then on the local Canadian DynoJet he made 319whp/345tq. The point that I'm trying to make is that I think you're putting way too much water into the peak numbers.



Absolutely! Thanks for trying to start a dialogue about this. I have some thoughts as to what may have caused the discrepancy, but I'd also be curious to hear from Hondata. If anyone else has something to add or ask, please do!

The first thing that comes to mind is testing methods. Hondata used a very different method when testing the stock and cp-e intakes:

Hondata tested the car this way because it eliminates many of the variables that can skew testing results. When you reset the battery between runs, you erase all of the learned knock and fuel trimming information, and you're basically operating off of hard tables alone. This is different from what we did in that we deliverately drove the car around before the testing so it would learn these parameters. We did this because we felt this would be the "real-world" test for the intake since the car has accounted for our hardware changes by adjusting fuel trims and any learned knock parameters.

For instance, you can reduce your boosted air temperature by reducing the pressure ratio at the impeller wheel. If you reduce the vacuum on the inlet of the impeller (as you would with a free-flowing intake), then you hit the same boost target with a lower shaft speed. This typically reduces turbo outlet temperatures which can affect (read: reduce) knock. So as you can imagine, if our intake is going knock more or less than the factory intake, we'd like the car to account for these changes so we can "see" them on the dyno. Hondata chose to take another approach in their testing, and I'd say that neither is technically right; just different.

I also didn't see an air/fuel readout on the dyno that Hondata posted. One thing that we did with our intake which helped our power production was to lean out the mixture slightly. That means we found the correct inner diameter for our MAF housing and then enlarged it ever so slightly. We did this because we assumed that most folks wouldn't be making extensive mods to their RDX. We figured most people would jus opt for the intake, and then maybe an exhaust down the road. To that end, we tuned the intake to make the most gains possible on an otherwise stock, or near-stock RDX. Again, I don't know what the resulting AFR's were, which would have been interesting to look at.

So is our intake a smart purchase with the Hondata flash? Absolutely. Removing restrictions before a turbo is always a good thing, and the fact that customers are reporting a reduction in fuel consumption is a testament to the reduction in engine pumping losses. This reduction in intake restiction not only reduces BAT as we discussed, but it also reduces turbo spool-up time. So in addition to the power gains, there are some other less tangible benefits.

Anyway, that's my two cents, and I appreciate you hearing me (us) out. If any of you would like to discuss any point I've brought up please feel free!