I heard about Prototype racing in a honda press release late last year. According to the PR, they provided the R&D team at Honda with a CAI and Exhaust headers for the TL that won at Thunderhill. I decided to email him earlier this morning inquiring if he produced a CAI for the TL. Here's his reply.

The guys at Honda R&D in Ohio built their own intake system, essentially just a cold-air box made from Aluminum that was sealed on top by the hood. What I built for them was an exhaust header [of sorts] to eliminate the close coupled CATS. I say "of sorts" because there are no primary tubes possible on these heads with just one oval exhaust port to work with. Still, they picked up another 30 HP even though they chose to use a crap 60 mm Comptech CAT-back system behind what I built for them. Baseline and post construction dyno runs were done here before I shipped the header back to Ohio, showing a 17 HP increase running through the stock exhaust system, but the final engine dyno testing was done at Honda R&D in Ohio, so I don't have access to those. The final product included some ECU tuning, which at this point isn't available to the public. I'm toying with the idea of producing something similar for other cars, but due to it's not including CATS there are legal issues to consider.

I found a few things very interesting. One, they built their own custom intake, which leads me to believe that we (the consumer) spend way too much money on custom CAI's, when we could probably fabricate one that works just as well ourselves. Two, ECU tuning that's not available to the public? Three, the claimed power increase before and after the Comptech exhaust was added, and four the smashing he gives the Comptech exhaust!

Here's the press release:
http://www.hondanews.com/CatID3011?m...24999&mime=asc

 

Good Information. Wheres Prototype Racing, i need to make a phone call.

 

They're in California. Here's his email address.

Joe McCarthy [joe@prototyperacing.com]

 

I appreciate that a lot.

Hopefully we can all find a solution in regards to this exhaust manifold misfortune.

 

https://acurazine.com/forums/ramblings-12/dont-forget-your-matrix-reloaded-cellphone-103752/

https://acurazine.com/forums/audio-video-electronics-navigation-22/neon-install-help-108624/

 

of course you can make your own intake.

its really not that hard. i used to work at an import shop and we'd make custom intakes all the time. we even used a pvc pipe once on an old beamer. thing worked like a charm

an intake is just a tube with a filter on the end of it. get it shpaed so that it fits, then make sure all the connections are sealed properly. thats it