My Injen CAI Install, bumper method
02-23-2004 | 11:28 PM
#1
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Intermediate
Joined: Aug 2003
Posts: 49
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From: New York, NY
My Injen CAI Install, bumper method
Hey guys. I'd like to share my experience with installing the Injen Cold Air Intake. My room mate and I didn't take as many pictures as I thought we did so this isn't exactly a step-by-step, but hopefully the pictures will be handy for someone. As a disclaimer, I'd like everyone to know that I'm a complete novice at working on cars. However, the intake seems to have been installed correctly (please let me know if it isn't!). My bumper didn't suffer any damage from the removal and it realigned perfectly when we put it back on. In any case, please do not hold me responsible for any damage done to your car.
I decided to do the install by removing the bumper. As I said in an earlier thread, my driveway sucks and I didn't feel it was safe to put the car on a jack.
To start off, turn your wheel all the way to the left. You will need to get to a clip in the driver's side wheel well later on. We did not do this prior to removing the battery and prior to the bumper removal, so no power steering. Then my room mate and I popped all the clips, nuts and screws off the bumper, as per the instructions on Acura's fog light install, found here:
https://www.hondacuraworld.com/Merch.../foglights.pdf
The clips are pretty easy to take off: slide a flathead screwdriver in the groove and under clip's head and wiggle the head out. Another member suggested covering the screwdriver with some electrical tape, since the clips are plastic. My room mate messed up the head of one of the clips, so do be careful. Going through steps one through five from those instructions, my car looked like this:
The bumper came off by first pulling on the fender portion of the bumper out (put your hand in the wheel well and pull out, as in towards the left and towards the right in the picture). Then, with your hands under the bumper, tilt it slightly up and out. In the picture, you can see that there are a few bumps in the black lining right under the headlights. These are hooks that keep the bumper in place. There are metal spring clips above the hooks that keep the bumper's holes around the hooks, so you may need to use a screwdriver to gently pry the bumper off the hooks as you tilt the bumper up and out. As a side note, the long white block right behind the two black rectangles at the very front of the car is styrofoam.
So, the bumper comes off. It may be heavier than you think, so be careful. Again, my driveway sucks, so I had a blanket laid out to put the bumper on after it was off the car. You may want to do the same.
The pipe that's directly connected to the throttle (the thing with the ribs) is a soft plastic, so after you disconnect the two hoses that are going into the pipe and untightening the clamp on the left end of the pipe, you can pretty much yank it off the throttle and air filter box. You should see this:
The brass thing below my right hand is the throttle opening. Keep that clean! You can see some water on mine because it started hailing during our install. I dried it with a paper towel and put some tape over the opening to prevent anything else from getting into it. You may want to do the same, just in case.
In my left hand is an air hose. In the picture there is a metal piece of tubing on the rubber hose, which needs to come off. We took it off by sliding a pair of pliers under the tube and wiggling the metal out slowly. But it was rather moot after we got it off. Later in the install, when the tube goes onto the new intake, our tubing was too long and we were getting kinks in it. We cut ours down a little bit, but you can decide for yourself.
In my right hand is the air temp sensor. There's not much to be said about this. Just pull it off by the plastic ring around it so you don't put stress on the wires. My left hand is pointing to a box that needs to be removed. This box looks like it has two pipes coming out its front face, one large and one small, but the top one is actually just a peg. The dark green piece of piping that's connected to it is also removed. I believe the removal of this box and green piping is the primary difference between the Injen CAI and the K & N CAI, where the Injen install requires it to be removed and the K & N does not.
My right hand is pointing to a long black hose which will have green radiator fluid running through it. The Injen instructions tell you to disconnect this long piece of hose from the dark green piping as well as from the throttle body (right under my right hand), flip, and reinstall one end to the original nipple on the throttle body and the other end to the nipple that looks like it's directly below my left hand (it's the one that's originally connected to the middle pipe of the green piping. If you stare at the picture and the green piping long enough, I'm pretty sure you'll get what I mean). I don't know why they want us to flip it but we did it, anyway. Remember to reinstall those clamps, too. Also, when disconnecting the long black hose, expect radiator fluid to come out. We temporarily plugged it up with a piece of paper towel.
The next piece that needs to come out is the air filter box. I believe it is only two nuts, one in the upper right and one in the lower left. The upper right is easy to take off, but the lower left one is pretty deep. You will need the 8" extension for that one. Being the poor college students that we are, we used three 3" ones, instead. Disconnecting the positive lead of the battery and taking the wiring out of its harness near the base of the battery may give you some more room to get to the nut, as shown here:
If you decide to disconnect the positive terminal too, be careful and don't touch the negative terminal while you're doing it. The battery cable is also harnessed to the bottom of the filter box. Take a pair of pliers to push the brown clip out. The air filter box should now be free and things should look like this (I still have the green piping on because we had not figured out the plumbing at that point):
You can see the brown clip in that picture, too. You may want to cover the battery terminals. If you were to short it, it would be one spicy meatball! We taped them up after the picture was taken.
This is when my room mate and I were getting pretty fed up, so I don't have many pictures left of the installation. Everything up to now was relatively easy. These four parts should be off your car:
And these four are the last:
The two on the bottom are probably the only required pieces to come off, but the other two come off pretty easily once everything else is out. The big box is the resonator, I believe, and the picture below shows an exploded view of how the pieces are connected:
There's one nut connecting the resonator to the lower portion of tubing and you may be able to see the brass threading in the picture above. That's where the nut is. There are another two nuts on the box. The one closer to the wheel well will need an extension. At this point I partially took apart the fender wall so it would give me more room to twist the wrench. If you can get to the nut without touching the lining, that's fine, but you will probably need to take it apart to get the next piece out. To disassemble the inner fender wall, there's a plastic clip in wheel well and you would pop it out just like the ones on the radiator cover under the hood. There is one more nut along the lining below the front edge of resonator (you can see it in the first picture of the car with the bumper off). Once the nuts are off, you can unhook the inner fender lining from the underbody lining. I'm sorry, but I do not have a picture of this hook or any of the lining, but you will see the hook, I'm sure.
After that's all done, take the box out. And with the fender lining partially disassembled, you should have enough room to take the lower segment of the tubing out. Just jiggle it to get it out of the ribbing with the upper tube segment. And, once that's out, you can take out the upper piece of tubing by taking off its cover. This cover is in the engine bay and you can sort of see it in the first picture of this post with the bumper off. It's right above the car's right headlight. That has two small plastic clips and maybe a nut. And finally, with the cover off, there's one last nut that can be reached from underneath the car that will free the last piece of tubing. This nut will be a bit difficult to get to, but you will see where the nut would be if you look for the brass threading in the picture.
And that's all there is to the uninstallation of the stock air intake. The installation of the new part is pretty simple if you can follow the pictures on Injen's installation guide and the words on the K & N guide. You should know where the open ends of the rubber hoses go and the mounting points for the rubber cylinders. Here is a picture which shows where the rest of the tubes go:
The new piece of rubber hosing that Injen provides (the one at the top of the picture) was a lot thicker than the original one, so I couldn't get the clamps back on. I will get some new clamps when I get a chance. I will also get small clamps for the small hose, for good measure. I'm not sure if they're really necessary since they are air lines and I can't imagine there ever being enough pressure to make these things go loose, but I'd do it for the peace of mind.
Once your installation's done, put your bumper back on and reconnect your battery (positive terminal first and expect a small spark when you connect the negative terminal). Remember your navi and/or radio code? Good!
That is all I have. If I am missing something or if you have anything to add to this, please let me know. I know a lot of people here are getting intakes, so I want this to be sticky-worthy. Thanks!
John
I decided to do the install by removing the bumper. As I said in an earlier thread, my driveway sucks and I didn't feel it was safe to put the car on a jack.
To start off, turn your wheel all the way to the left. You will need to get to a clip in the driver's side wheel well later on. We did not do this prior to removing the battery and prior to the bumper removal, so no power steering. Then my room mate and I popped all the clips, nuts and screws off the bumper, as per the instructions on Acura's fog light install, found here:
https://www.hondacuraworld.com/Merch.../foglights.pdf
The clips are pretty easy to take off: slide a flathead screwdriver in the groove and under clip's head and wiggle the head out. Another member suggested covering the screwdriver with some electrical tape, since the clips are plastic. My room mate messed up the head of one of the clips, so do be careful. Going through steps one through five from those instructions, my car looked like this:
The bumper came off by first pulling on the fender portion of the bumper out (put your hand in the wheel well and pull out, as in towards the left and towards the right in the picture). Then, with your hands under the bumper, tilt it slightly up and out. In the picture, you can see that there are a few bumps in the black lining right under the headlights. These are hooks that keep the bumper in place. There are metal spring clips above the hooks that keep the bumper's holes around the hooks, so you may need to use a screwdriver to gently pry the bumper off the hooks as you tilt the bumper up and out. As a side note, the long white block right behind the two black rectangles at the very front of the car is styrofoam.
So, the bumper comes off. It may be heavier than you think, so be careful. Again, my driveway sucks, so I had a blanket laid out to put the bumper on after it was off the car. You may want to do the same.
The pipe that's directly connected to the throttle (the thing with the ribs) is a soft plastic, so after you disconnect the two hoses that are going into the pipe and untightening the clamp on the left end of the pipe, you can pretty much yank it off the throttle and air filter box. You should see this:
The brass thing below my right hand is the throttle opening. Keep that clean! You can see some water on mine because it started hailing during our install. I dried it with a paper towel and put some tape over the opening to prevent anything else from getting into it. You may want to do the same, just in case.
In my left hand is an air hose. In the picture there is a metal piece of tubing on the rubber hose, which needs to come off. We took it off by sliding a pair of pliers under the tube and wiggling the metal out slowly. But it was rather moot after we got it off. Later in the install, when the tube goes onto the new intake, our tubing was too long and we were getting kinks in it. We cut ours down a little bit, but you can decide for yourself.
In my right hand is the air temp sensor. There's not much to be said about this. Just pull it off by the plastic ring around it so you don't put stress on the wires. My left hand is pointing to a box that needs to be removed. This box looks like it has two pipes coming out its front face, one large and one small, but the top one is actually just a peg. The dark green piece of piping that's connected to it is also removed. I believe the removal of this box and green piping is the primary difference between the Injen CAI and the K & N CAI, where the Injen install requires it to be removed and the K & N does not.
My right hand is pointing to a long black hose which will have green radiator fluid running through it. The Injen instructions tell you to disconnect this long piece of hose from the dark green piping as well as from the throttle body (right under my right hand), flip, and reinstall one end to the original nipple on the throttle body and the other end to the nipple that looks like it's directly below my left hand (it's the one that's originally connected to the middle pipe of the green piping. If you stare at the picture and the green piping long enough, I'm pretty sure you'll get what I mean). I don't know why they want us to flip it but we did it, anyway. Remember to reinstall those clamps, too. Also, when disconnecting the long black hose, expect radiator fluid to come out. We temporarily plugged it up with a piece of paper towel.
The next piece that needs to come out is the air filter box. I believe it is only two nuts, one in the upper right and one in the lower left. The upper right is easy to take off, but the lower left one is pretty deep. You will need the 8" extension for that one. Being the poor college students that we are, we used three 3" ones, instead. Disconnecting the positive lead of the battery and taking the wiring out of its harness near the base of the battery may give you some more room to get to the nut, as shown here:
If you decide to disconnect the positive terminal too, be careful and don't touch the negative terminal while you're doing it. The battery cable is also harnessed to the bottom of the filter box. Take a pair of pliers to push the brown clip out. The air filter box should now be free and things should look like this (I still have the green piping on because we had not figured out the plumbing at that point):
You can see the brown clip in that picture, too. You may want to cover the battery terminals. If you were to short it, it would be one spicy meatball! We taped them up after the picture was taken.
This is when my room mate and I were getting pretty fed up, so I don't have many pictures left of the installation. Everything up to now was relatively easy. These four parts should be off your car:
And these four are the last:
The two on the bottom are probably the only required pieces to come off, but the other two come off pretty easily once everything else is out. The big box is the resonator, I believe, and the picture below shows an exploded view of how the pieces are connected:
There's one nut connecting the resonator to the lower portion of tubing and you may be able to see the brass threading in the picture above. That's where the nut is. There are another two nuts on the box. The one closer to the wheel well will need an extension. At this point I partially took apart the fender wall so it would give me more room to twist the wrench. If you can get to the nut without touching the lining, that's fine, but you will probably need to take it apart to get the next piece out. To disassemble the inner fender wall, there's a plastic clip in wheel well and you would pop it out just like the ones on the radiator cover under the hood. There is one more nut along the lining below the front edge of resonator (you can see it in the first picture of the car with the bumper off). Once the nuts are off, you can unhook the inner fender lining from the underbody lining. I'm sorry, but I do not have a picture of this hook or any of the lining, but you will see the hook, I'm sure.
After that's all done, take the box out. And with the fender lining partially disassembled, you should have enough room to take the lower segment of the tubing out. Just jiggle it to get it out of the ribbing with the upper tube segment. And, once that's out, you can take out the upper piece of tubing by taking off its cover. This cover is in the engine bay and you can sort of see it in the first picture of this post with the bumper off. It's right above the car's right headlight. That has two small plastic clips and maybe a nut. And finally, with the cover off, there's one last nut that can be reached from underneath the car that will free the last piece of tubing. This nut will be a bit difficult to get to, but you will see where the nut would be if you look for the brass threading in the picture.
And that's all there is to the uninstallation of the stock air intake. The installation of the new part is pretty simple if you can follow the pictures on Injen's installation guide and the words on the K & N guide. You should know where the open ends of the rubber hoses go and the mounting points for the rubber cylinders. Here is a picture which shows where the rest of the tubes go:
The new piece of rubber hosing that Injen provides (the one at the top of the picture) was a lot thicker than the original one, so I couldn't get the clamps back on. I will get some new clamps when I get a chance. I will also get small clamps for the small hose, for good measure. I'm not sure if they're really necessary since they are air lines and I can't imagine there ever being enough pressure to make these things go loose, but I'd do it for the peace of mind.
Once your installation's done, put your bumper back on and reconnect your battery (positive terminal first and expect a small spark when you connect the negative terminal). Remember your navi and/or radio code? Good!
That is all I have. If I am missing something or if you have anything to add to this, please let me know. I know a lot of people here are getting intakes, so I want this to be sticky-worthy. Thanks!
John
02-24-2004 | 01:09 AM
#3
Use all 3 Pedals at once
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,486
Likes: 1
From: All*Cal
Thanks a lot for the descriptive install of you Injen CAI...as you probably already know, I am thinking of getting the same intake. This will be a lot of help for me when I do my install.
02-24-2004 | 11:09 AM
#6
Thread Starter
Intermediate
Joined: Aug 2003
Posts: 49
Likes: 0
From: New York, NY
3Pedal: No, I don't have foglights. I'm not sure how they would complicate the bumper removal, but take a look at the pdf file of the foglight install at hondacuraworld.com and see how the wiring is harnessed.
A little more information about the install: It took my room mate and I about just under three hours to do. A lot of the time was spent on looking for the nuts and clips, as well as figuring out which hoses to take out and where to plug the open ends in. So with this hindsight, I expect the install to go much more quickly for you guys. Plus, I'm pretty much retarded when it comes to cars. If you're a little more experienced, that should give you an edge, too.
As for my impressions on the intake, the intake gets pretty loud as soon as you pass 3000 and really loud after 4000. I may have had the same problem as TSXTim, where the intake is vibrating against something else in the car. I remember that the cold air extension of the tube gets pretty close to a part of the frame of the car. It looked like maybe a quarter of an inch gap between the pipe and the frame. I will look into that next weekend.
A little more information about the install: It took my room mate and I about just under three hours to do. A lot of the time was spent on looking for the nuts and clips, as well as figuring out which hoses to take out and where to plug the open ends in. So with this hindsight, I expect the install to go much more quickly for you guys. Plus, I'm pretty much retarded when it comes to cars. If you're a little more experienced, that should give you an edge, too.
As for my impressions on the intake, the intake gets pretty loud as soon as you pass 3000 and really loud after 4000. I may have had the same problem as TSXTim, where the intake is vibrating against something else in the car. I remember that the cold air extension of the tube gets pretty close to a part of the frame of the car. It looked like maybe a quarter of an inch gap between the pipe and the frame. I will look into that next weekend.
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