Are these things expensive intakes a fucking meme?

Are these things expensive intakes a fucking meme?

According to this guy i can just blow a whole under my air filter case and it would be the same equivalent.

youtube.com/watch?v=4_-Hu6jcUC8

I don't know man, I just don't know

depends on the car/engine/mod setup. consult reviews

Pretty much yes. They're popular because they're a safe, low effort mod.

"Cold air intakes" are pretty much a meme considering almost all modern cars have the air intake pulling air in from near the front of the vehicle near the grill or headlight area. Older vehicles that had carbs and pulled air in from right on top of the engine would benefit from cold air intakes but that's really not the case as much these days. Promises of "higher airflow" also doesn't mean much if you don't even tune your ECU to take advantage of the extra airflow because your MAF and O2 sensors will only allow roughly the same amount of air into the engine as before.

So yes, by themselves these intake mods are pointless because you'd really need to modify other areas of your engine to the point that the airflow the stock intake system provides is inadequate before you see much difference. For the most part people add that shit because it's easy and "looks cool" when you pop your hood to show off your ricebox engine.

What about turbocharged engines? I've seen CAI manufacturers claim that gains in a turboed engine will be much higher with a CAI but I'm not sure how true this is?
Do you also know if CAIs can actually make more power gains if combined with more upgrades in a turbocharged car like a downpipe?

It depends on the specific vehicle. If you've modified your turbocharged engine to operate with more boost than stock and have changed the fuel/air mappings then sure, a less restrictive intake will likely give you some easy gains. Again though, just installing a CAI onto your turbo's intake isn't going to make much difference unless you also do some other modifications.

An intake and exhaust will get you power but only if you tune it afterwards. The tune for the additional airflow is the important part though, or else you won't really see any hp gains

That makes sense to me
Thank you

K&N claims their intake will give 58hp on my truck which is about 15%. Most likely bull shit and their filters are garbage anyway so why should I trust them?

Im more concerned with the MPG. Apparently when the engine can breathe more easily it could boost your MPG by about 5 or 8 MPG, is this right?

>is this right?

No, probably not. Think about it, recent government regulations in the US and EU keep pushing for higher and higher fuel efficiency, and until recently, gas had been at record high prices. If all auto manufacturers had to do was a $50-$100 modification to their vehicle's air intakes fleet-wide to meet those new fuel efficiency standards then don't you think they would've done that instead of spending millions and millions of dollars on research and testing trying to figure out other ways of accomplishing that goal?

From the image it looks like a car horn with tube and a filter attached.

If you want real performance, remove the filter. It's better raw but beware of driving on a dirty road.

Nope, intakes are more for horsepower, usually when adding some horsepower you lose mpg

turbochargers are a positive feedback situation, so reducing intake restriction and temperature can have bigger effects

not mutually exclusive

>According to this guy
Not going to sit through 25min of Cletus the 6fingered sister fucker drunkenly rambling on, but a quick skip through showed no dyno results- so fuck his bullshit.

Anyway.
Clean air filter = good, the engines not choking to draw in more air and as a result will work better. People should give them a good clean out more often, especially in summer when they suck up lots of dust, pollen and small animals.
However,
Unless there's some fundamental design problem with the vehicle itself where it can't really pull in cold, clean air or there's some kind of heat soak effect- changing a filter to a different design will not really have much effect. Most of the time it'll go back to 'zero' in terms how well the cars tuned and at best it might scavenge in a couple of single digits of horsepower by benefit of a better design. Most modern cars (since 1990+) tend to have relatively decent intakes for stock use and I can't really think of any off the top of my head that where so bad it needed throwing in the bin.

Modifications-
This is where intakes become important. You've gotten a bigger carb/injectors, fuel pumps, higher flowing turbos/s-charger and then decided to map it all out so its running more CFM through the system to account for the increased fuel air ratios
At some point, the system will choke with the stock intake and filter. That's when the intake system makes the main difference to your modified vehicle.

Y...You know thats a "short ram intake right? cold air intakes snake to the bottom of the wheel well so they suck in cold air because you know..cold air sinks and heat rises. the one in ops picture is a short ram intake it just sits in the engine bay and sucks in hot air

In the hot summer day, the asphalt is pretty hot and the hot air rises from it. So the closer your air intake is to the asphalt, the hotter your air will be.

Wouldn't air from the wheel well area have during the summertime:

a. Hot air from the very hot pavement rising up
b. Hot air from the brakes and rotor
c. Hot air from the hot tires

>Not doing a CAI enclosed pod
these things where a meme around 10 years ago when all the young blokes got their licences here in aus, they where so poorly made and installed NSW Banned them and i totally agree.

If it sucks in hot air and doesnt have a Airbox or cold air intake its fucking USELESS you actually lose power.

i got a proper OTR CAI recently and it sounds amazing and gave a nice little boost to power/torque and responsiveness compared to a stock box filter

Still CAI is usually better if done right.

>if done right.
the stock airbox is usually done the best, especially in small space engine bays

>the stock airbox is usually done the best
yeah, the best to save money

on an NA engine it really is for street use without going on ITBs.

>N/A

KEK

n/a fag here if you have good head flow in a stock n/a a OTR CAI can make HUGE gains over stock

for example my 200rwhp ls1 barely felt like a v8 but after a decent intake, exhaust and tune its making over 300rwhp completely stock

Depends on your engine if its a i6 usually the stock airboxes and intakes flow pretty good n/a or fi