thinking of buying short intake for my2000 tl .QUESTION Which BRAND IS BEST, AN HOW LOUD IS THE INTAKE? i want a perfect fit an NO check engine light to pop on

 

i might be wrong here, so dont quote me on this, but, i think a short ram intake is worse that the stock intake on your car. and here is my logic on this. The short rams takes air from under your engine. the air here is warmer because, well, your engine is hot :p the stock intake still takes air from the nose of your car where is hasnt hot the engine and is cooler. and since cold air is more dence than warm air you would be getting less HP from a short ram intake than a stock or AM CAI.
feel free to rip me if im wrong though.
chris

 

Actually there was some guy on the Acl.com website that did a test. When driving a shortram and CAI perform roughly the same...more or less, but it seems from dynos, the CAI produces better. You would think that the shortram would be drawing jsut heat from the engine bay, but it's not entirely true. Air is constantly moving under the hood there when you are driving. The main thing that makes a difference is idling. The CAI was able to more efficiently cool down the engine than a shortram. Shortrams do make more sound than a cai at low driving probably because of the location of the CAI, but once you go WOT...the CAI sounds so beautiful.

 

the short ram is better than your stock setup. Both stock and short ram induct hot air at least on our TL's. The short ram might get a little colder air because get's more fresh air than stock. It dosen't really matter, using common sense you would like fresh air and not hot air from the engine bay, is just sounds better, the difference on temp would not be enough to increase power from any of the 3 setup's. So when buying an intake forget about the air temp factor. I personally do like to induct fresh air, but that is just because it makes more sense to me. The CAI does make deeper sound, because of the longer pipe, the Short ram is by far the loudest. Another thing you could do is installed a highflow filter on you stock setup and remove the resornator. This would make your stock just like a CAI.

Do a search on "intake".