If you use a drop in K&N air filter, remove the resonator below it for fresh air to come in. Another mod you can do is widening the airbox hole. If you remove the air filter and look down at the airbox, the air intake hole is quite small. What you can do is cut out the entire bottom of the airbox. This would allow maximal amount of air into your intake (instead of sucking through that tiny little hole).
On a side note, a friend of mine has an AEM cold air on his 2003 TLS. I borrowed it and dyno'ed both the drop in K&N filter/stock airbox (modified) and the AEM system. AEM gave the exact same torque and peak out gaining only .5whp over the stock system (K&N, resonator removed, stock airbox's bottom cut out). Needless to say, $30 for the K&N is a lot better in term of performance/money than paying $200+ for the AEM cold air system. But to each his own...

BTW, the AEM setup, the resonator was also removed (have to anyways but just wanted to clear things up).

 

A dyno cannot reproduce the effect of having COLD AIR foced into the intake and engine bay as you drive

 

Anyone know where I can get a K&N drop in filter (since it is not sold on this sitee)? Is it similar to the comptech drop in filter in terms of gains?

 

You can buy it at most car parts places. Because our TLs are not common cars, you may have to special order it. I bought mine at Murray's, a big chain here in the Midwest--they ordered it from their warehouse and I picked it up the next morning. You can also go to http://www.knfilters.com and use their online retailers.

As far as gains....(bring back search pls...)....this has been discussed before. There is minimal gain in hp. I have found that I *have* gained 2-3 mpg in mileage, a savings of a couple hundred bucks in gas per year with the amount I drive. I'll edit this post to give you the link to my thread from a couple of months ago about the issue. I haven't tried the trick described above (cutting the resonator out), and am not really interested, as I bought the filter a) to save trees, as it lasts 50k miles, THEN you wash it out and use it for 50k more and b) to improve gas mileage. To each his own!

 

How do you take the resonator out? Is it a permanet thing or just something you can pull off or unscrew?

 

something you can pull off and unscrew. Takes about 45 mins-1hr. even less if you know how to take off the bumper

 

Wow, finally someone did it. Can you post the dyno. That would be cool to see. I have been saying this for months. Hey people like to pay $200+ OK with me. Is the noise, noise could play with your mind. That was awesome dude.

Hey you could always attach the filter to the top of the airbox(ie screws) and removed the bottom part of the airbox. You will be sucking hot air, but you could build a custom bottom airbox.

I did this and it just got louder. At the beginning I thought it increase power, but in reallity it was just noise.

 

You can do it in about 25 mins...Badazz just has some problems with bumper removal

 

yo! dude check your yahoo email account. I asked you something there

 

The dyno has 2 fans blowing onto it. One sits right infront of the radiator and the other one has a stand and blows straight into the engine bay. Air temperature outside is around 70 deg.

Bitium, I don't have a scanner. I'll look around and see if some friends have one.

 

I'd like to know where to get the K&N for $30. I paid $50.