I've had a lot of people give me mixed impressions on cold air intakes. Some people say they're actually dyno-proven to give you a bit of a boost in horsepower, whereas others say the air intake on most cars IS a cold air intake, that the plastic tubes in a stock intake don't heat up, and any and all air brought into your engine, is cold.

In fact, those same people say CAIs can make performance worse, saying the aluminum pipe on the intake heats up, becomes a victim of heatsoak, and can heat up the air coming through the intake pipe.

However it's still been shown that CAIs can give you SOME boost. I dunno, just posting my thoughts. Your opinions?

 

CAI's help improve power since they have less bends and chambers (less restriction), a lower intake point (most of the time) and also have larger diameter piping.

The downside to it is that it's aluminum, which will absorb heat quickly. A few 3G guys have put insulation on it to help keep it cool to overcome this. I think it's good...

 

Very minimal power if anything. Its mainly for the looks, and the sound, the latter of which is worth it

I can't really add much because while I did get better fuel economy when I added a CAI to my Integra, because before I got that CAI I didn't even HAVE an intake, air got sucked in directly from the throttle body.

 

Yeah I bought an Injen intake, they said you can expect to get an extra 10 HP.

But I got a good deal on it, so as long as it doesn't worsen performance, I'm good

 

Depends on the car, the newer and more well engineered the vehicle the less a CAI will do. Some modern cars have highly advanced air intakes from the factory and nothing the aftermarket can do will provide an improvement.

There are forums for virtually any model specific vehicle available, do some searching and see what's out there.

 

some cars are very responsive to mods and can make 10+ whp with a CAI. some cars barely break 3. but the sound of your car free breathing is priceless

 

they definitely make some sort of good difference on a 3g tl. i drove them back to back with and without an aem cai and u can tell the car breathes easier.

 

my friends cars are: m6, s500, c6, 996TT...none of them have a cold air intake. they don't make one, the stock airbox on those high performance cars are more than sufficent. only thing they can/did do was change the filters.

but on our stock intakes, they are good at all.

also on the cars above, the air intake is HUGE and really built to recieve the most air, unlike cheaper cars

 

please tell me it at least had a filter

 

I have dyno-proven gains on my 2G RL. Link is here--click I did it as an experiment precisely to answer this question. I ultimately decided to keep both the intake and exhaust after testing. I do notice the additional power. In addition, the two together sound beautiful. Click on my Car Domain link to see videos of the setup.

 

I can't see the page at the moment, but I'm guessing the gains are top end?

 

even if they dont do jack but make a cooler sound under wide open throttle, i like em.

 

Cliffs:

*Installed a K&N filter
*Removed resonator/water collector. Now two paths to the filter.
*Sounds great, can't tell power gains


I thought of doing the CAI treatment to my Subaru, but wound up doing something a little bit of both worlds. I replaced the stock filter with a K&N. I've heard from some that the MAF sensor gets screwed up because of the oil, but the filter seemed pretty dry to me.

The other thing was to remove the little canister at the bottom of the airbox. IT is a white colored ABS plastic bin that looks like a water collector or intake resonator. Subaru's have a front air collector that routs it up a little over to and down into the airbox. The canister I removed at the bottom was at the top of the fender, so I now have the original intake path and an additional hole (3 1/2" approx) at the bottom of the box prior to the filter.

The result was a definite improvement in the sound (worth the trouble alone), and the response, well, it might be just a hair better but I could not sit here and say "I gained 5 HP". I have no idea.

I've seen people do custom airboxes for the Legacy, but I think my solution works just as good and only cost me $50 at PepBoys for the filter.

 

nope! for a while, I just stretched an old sock over the TB and drove like that. I was young, dumb and cheap back then.... the car was a better deal than anything else and ran great. The guy just got the car off auction, he was selling a few Integras... it was the rainy season anyway. no dust to worry about. He probably took the intake off and put it on another car.

 

Depends on the car as iTimmy said. Some will, some won't. On my 2002 TL-S it gave a slight increase, but it sounded much meaner.

What car are you looking to install a CAI on?

 

Really? Mine's an 03 CL-S. So if you got a slight boost in yours, I guess I could expect the same?

 

CAI's work wonders on older vehicles, but newer vehicles have their intake manifolds so tuned that CAI's will really only improve the sound of induction with a slight boost in power & efficiency. In newer cars, the efficiency and resonance is completely tuned at the manifold, but on older cars, the chambers were never a focal point. That's why on newer Honda K series motor, whenever you see an after-market intake manifold, it retains the factory design with larger diameter ports.

 

I've had mine on my 01 CL-S now for 4 years, and while I only noticed a slight power gain, it sounds much better and I am achieving a solid 3-4 MPG better than before as well...Something not really noted here in this thread...

 

I never dynoed mine... it was more of a butt dyno. But there were many people back then (2001-2003) who did dyno their intakes and most people saw gains of 4-6hp. And yes.. if you can stay off the gas you should see a slight improvement in MPG as well.

 

I love how my TL sounds with AEM CAI............ extremely good.

 

Not all CAI's have aluminum piping. The CT CAI if you recall was all plastic.

 

My RL sounds like a luxury NSX at full throttle... A very nice growl

 

They're based off the same engine family right? C-series?

 

Well they're both 90 degree V6's called the C series

Other than that, they're not that similar.

 

aftermarket intakes do very little on many of the latest high performance engines. They let more dirt in the engine and rice up the engine bay IMO. I would never add one again.

 

^ it changes the sound.... in a good way

 

Let more dirt in? Maybe if you don't clean the filter that often..

 

Or you can get a pre-filter, too. I got a Hydroshield for my Injen intake. The guy in customer service said it blocks out all water splashes and such--that the only way you can get hydrolock is if the intake is submerged in water. We'll see if that's true, though...

 

and changing your stock filter for a k&n while keeping the stock piping is no different. Both have the same potential for letting dirt in, esp if you don't clean it to begin with.