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Turned my opinion around on cheap cold air intakes after a dyno day at a local shop
I always thought spending $400 on a big name intake was stupid and the $60 eBay ones worked fine. Then I went to a dyno event last month at Speed Solutions in Phoenix and watched a guy run his $60 intake on a stock Civic. It actually lost 4 horsepower compared to the stock box. The temp readings showed air coming in at 15 degrees hotter than ambient. That got me looking at the design and how it just sucks hot air from the engine bay. Now I get why guys pay for a proper heat shield setup. Has anyone else had a cheap mod actually hurt their numbers on a dyno?
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the_kim5mo ago
Your one dyno pull doesn't tell the whole story since that cheap intake might have been installed poorly or had a bad filter that day. Plenty of guys run budget intakes with a well-placed heat shield and see gains over stock just fine. The real problem is cheap intakes that don't pull air from the fender or outside the engine bay period.
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leog685mo ago
Wait wait wait, hold up. So you're saying that dyno pull might not mean anything because the intake was just installed badly? That's kind of wild to me, @the_kim. I mean, I get what you're saying about heat shields and fender intakes, but that one test still showed some numbers that are hard to just ignore completely. I've seen plenty of guys with cheap intakes that had heat shields but still ended up pulling hot air from the engine bay after a few hard runs. The real trick is making sure your intake is actually sealed off from the engine heat, not just sticking a piece of metal near it.
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