Cold Air Intakes. Debunking false claims.

I looked through several CAI posts on the site and came across this post. I thought to myself "perfect, exactly what I need!". Fortunately it sounds like I really lucked out by jumping to the end before reading to far into this! I digress...My question is, if a squirrel destroyed your air box and insurance is buying you a new one, would you buy a stock or go with a CAI? The CAI is quite a bit cheaper.

 

Stock.

 

I went with this one from HPS, it takes a cone style filter (comes with a K&N). My truck is also tuned, according to my IAT sensor the air coming in is pretty close to outside ambient air temperatures with the exception of sitting at idle for long periods on hot summer days in traffic.

 

I'm going to share my experience with the Holley iNTECH Cold Air Intake. I've linked the short writeup I did on the intake on my personal build page on Holley's MyGarage. You can also follow build progress there. Since I AM an employee of Holley, I am not trying to be long-winded or advertise here, and will keep it as non-biased as I can. This intake just came out, so I can finally talk and post about it.

https://www.holley.com/garage/blog/view/2252/

My experience:

-iNTECH CAI increased acceleration feel/response, particularly above 3500 RPM (because of the VVT)
-It makes better noises than the stock intake, like a lot better
-No Check Engine lights, codes, etc. The intake uses a washable and reusable dry filter, not an oiled one.
-Produced +13 horsepower and +12 lbs.ft. of torque (which I would say is industry expectation/normal)
-We tried to document MPG as best as possible. Gains are marginal, at best. The most I saw was around .7-1 MPG difference on longer road trips, most of the time it was the same or close to stock MPG, but the truck didn't feel as sluggish. No change in city MPG.

 

Intake only change yielded those hp and tq numbers? Nothing else done. That’s impressive.

dyno charts?

 

Yep, let's so those dyno charts. If what you're saying is true, then you'll have people lining up around the block for these.
You'll have to forgive my skepticism though. Everyone claims gains from intakes...very, very few deliver.

Edit:
Ok, here's the chart from the website.
Why was the pull done in 2nd gear, instead of the 1:1 ratio gear, 4th?

Edit2:
Ok, I guess people usually do truck pulls in lower gears, because of tire size/diff ratios? I come from the car world for this kind of stuff, I thought you always did pulls in the 1:1 ratio, especially with a non-load cell dyno like Dynojet.

 

I would also have liked to have seen same day. Look at the dates June with 51% humidity and 83 degrees. Test with intake was in October with 37% humidity and 73 degrees. Lower temps and lower humidity would cause some increase in hp as those would improve DA.

 

If it's not done on the same dyno, the same day with similar conditions and the same operator/calibration/setup then small gains like that are completely within the margin of error.

 

Agree and intakes usually show the largest gains higher in the rpm range. Which is some of what we see in the graph provided.

 

I do think they did their best on getting all parameters the same. Always was the same dyno, same operator, gear, etc. and as similar conditions as possible. I just own the truck, so I can't offer complete insight into the exact specifics of their testing.

 

Thanks for sharing it. So is the part going to the radiator some type of intake scoop?

 

Too bad they couldn’t utilize the scoop on the hood of the TDR Sport and Pros.

 

3-1/2 months between tests with a 10 degree difference in temps favoring the Holly isn’t very conclusive.

 

this!

 

4% difference in max power. Meanwhile, the first run had a dyno correction factor of 1.02, while the second run had the correction factor at 0.99, to account for temp/humidity differences. Presumably the power difference would've been larger without the correction factors applied.

 

Other companies post dyno charts, too. Really comes down to if you trust them. AFE intake for 2nd gen 1GR-FE (click for full-size):



Runs were 3 days apart. Correction factors and ambient conditions not shown.

 

That’s part of the challenge with dyno data, you can make it show what ever you want if you know how. Beyond that correction factors still do not fully normalize the results, help but still not the same. I really like to see runs as close together as possible.

 

4 month apart with different SAE correction is more than enough to dismiss any numbers being comparable. K&N dyno charts are on the same day with same setup and they show hilarious gains for a filter, but when someone independent tests them they never show any gains... Hmmmmm

 

This is the chart that AFE provides to sell the Momentum GT. On their dynos, we know that they ambient air was about 16* cooler with their intake compared with their stock measured dyno run day, but the humidity on the colder day was slightly higher. We don't know the correction. We also don't know if they maybe used premium fuel or did an oil change, or anything else which could be in the margin of error. Maybe the stock filter was dirty and they compounded all these factors to make it more appealing. At least they did state the ambient temp. It also doesn't state whether it was with the front ram air scoop, which I suspect it must have been. This intake seems almost identical to the iNTECH in design. If insurance pays for your intake, get a stock one to always have. If you MUST get an intake, I would go for the iNTECH or the AFE, but I am not sure if there is any way to ensure no CELs for every single vehicle.

Edit: This was also in 3rd gear and not a 1:1 gear for a 3rd gen. I am inclined to believe that there is a very marginal gain for $500 and I am not aware of the filtration efficiency of the filter other than their claims of 97% if I remember. The tests were also over a month apart. A little too much "Engineered Adrenaline" for my liking.

What do you all think?

 

Curious, what year and model Celi ?