5th gear would be more noticable as it's an overdrive gear. with minimal gains from intake and exhaust it's harder to feel the lower gears unless u use a gtech or a stopwatch.

with an 8lb flywheel and intake in my integra LS 5th seemed to pull better. not a lot more but noticable.. haha and after the flywheel with ****ty tires 1st gear was useless if i got on it and 2nd too if it was wet or sandy. tires mean everything.

Thanks guys for all your help. I think I check every angle before I ask but I guess denewbification just takes time. And what rookie post would be complete without another question? RealDS13, how much did you pay for your intake, where from, and is it a shortram or extended cold air? The cheapest I have found them is $175 at i-m-racing.com. And for you other experts, if I want a cold air, should I buy the extension Injen sells and pray it fits or go the fabrication route?

P.S. I don't know exactly how waterlock works but I understand the concept, so find something more creative to bust on me for.

yeah, I've heard too many horror stories about water locking so I'm not gonna get any extention. I got my injen short ram cheap off some kid that crashed his 240 and I'm pretty happy with it.

water locking basically happens when you drive thru a puddle or something... and the intake being all the way down in ur fender sucks in water. the water goes into the engine. Unlike air, water doesn't compress, and it brings ur engine to a halt. If enuf water gets in there you engine won't start up again without major repairs....

With my altima i drilled an oval hole into my filter and then screwed in the plate in the back and put the sensor into the intake. it does make a difference. it reads intake air temp only but fuel addition is affected by it. once i didthis fuel economy went up and i didn't run as rich. there isn't any hp difference if you were wondering

http://www.altimas.net/registry/user...ures%20022.jpg

$130 brand new? BTW I just PM'd you

$130.... practically new... this kid put it in his car and then crashed his car like a month later. the intake is mint, the filter wasn't even dirty when i bought it.

PM reply sent.

i got mine for about 200 bucks in the box. Its this black polished intake. I've never seen black before but i still like it:) 130? thats a steal!

Just to clear up some info........
Many people assume that a 3" won't make very much difference than a 2.5". The fact of the matter is that the engine is pullying atmospheric pressure. If you allow an additional .5" of intake you are creating additional air mass, which is a great plus for combustion. The point of having a cold air intake with a larger diameter is to somewhat force feed your engine. The colder air and the greater the mass of the intake, the more air molecules the engine can consume before TDC. Even if the throttle body is slightly smaller it would create more velocity.
Honestly don't waist your time with intake and headers first, I would rather stack my chip's on an internal build up like cams and machining. Then when you do the externals such as intake, headers, and sensors you will see a greater increase in HP.
But if you want to pay $130 for an Injen and 1 or 2 Donkey's in HP that is your perogative.
If I were you save your money, and just buy a cheap15 or 30 dollar air filter.

If you cut it down to basics, an engine is an air pump. Thats why it's kind of funny when someoe says that they gained a whole bunch of horsepower by swapping to a high flow finter, intake syste, headers, and exhaust. You didn't really "gain" anything - you just gave the engine better breathing, so that it can produce horsepower easier. With the exception of Porsche, Ferrari, etc. all 'general class" stock engines aren't performing to their maximum potential - they're all basically detuned for the following reasons (if not more):

1) fuel consumption
2) driveability
3) noise level
4) engine longetivity

And manufacturers do this in order to have cars that get good mileage, are comfortable and easy to drive, and will last long during the daily grind.

Truth is, air filters, headers, and exhaust do not ADD anything. Like what Vinnie said - you'll see more quote-unquote "gains" in HP when you change these parts on a built engine as opposed to a stock engine - and that is because you're letting a tuned engine breathe better, so that it can generate it's capabilities better.

Keep in mind we're talking NA here. regardless of intake type, an NA engine will only "suck in" up to a certain amount of air through each engine cycle. Thus, freer breathing (filter, header, exhaust) won't give the engine "more air" for more power - it just lets the engine breath in as much as it can without the restrictions of the factory filter, header, exhaust.

So this is where I disagree with "bigger is better". Yes - a 3" intake pipe will probably give more power gain than a 2.5, but does that mean a 4, or 5, or 6 inch will "add" even more? Not really. It's all dependent on what the engine is trying to pull in in relation to it's needs. There's a limit as to how big the piping should be before you're just taking up too much space with piping.

The common intake size is usually 3" because 1) OEM throttle bodies are near this size, and 2) 3" mandrel piping is still small enough to fit within the confines of an engine bay and the closed hood.

Finally, a "cold air" system DOES NOT give more air by volume compared to a short ram. It's not as if there's no air whatsoever inside the piping at all times - there's always air in there. Cold air systems show more power increase because of air density, not mass. It's already a given that cold air (from the outside) is more dense than hot air (from under the hood). Thus for 1 part of air going into the engine per cycle, you'll have more oxygen packed into that part of air if you pull the air from a colder source.

I hope that + Vinnie's post sheds some more light on the whole intake situation

:)

Well said!! One of my friends who is even poorer than me (rare) made a "air intake" by simply taking dryer tubing and attaching a filter to the end of it. For all intesive purposes it worked fine. Personally I have a kind of rigged up ram air set-up. First I bought a AEM short ram intake. This was my first upgrade and it was very easy to install. Then much later on, i figured "why not remove this little piece under my turn signal in my front bumper (i have a 93 S13) and use something to funnel the air back to my filter. So with a little adaptation of the old air filter box, a cone, and some duck tape I managed to set up a ram air system.

Now before I get nailed from people saying well that doesn't like give you 5 or 10 horsepower or anything, I KNOW. My friends and I were bored out of our minds one night so we said, "why don't we figure out a way to route more fresh air to your intake?" So yeah it serves its purpose that we built it for, but i realize it's not like I just added a SAFM system or anything.

if having a 3" intake tube would be beneficial, then why is the inner daimeter of our MAF ~2"?

my brain's fixin to make me believe that the small bottleneck of the maf actually boosts intake velocity. The air has to travel faster through the neck creating a high pressure jetstream, but would be no real bottleneck for the TB because of how long the intake tract is. The length allows for the proper amount of air, the design of the maf allows for a nice solid stream of it.

or not.

w/ever... all i know is i didnt like my ebay intake. The sound it made at WOT was pretty ugly, and everyone's missing one thing- HEAT SOAK

The exhaust is right there. The stock airbox is designed to draw air from outside the engine bay. All shortrams draw air from near the exhaust manifold. Hot air from the radiator fan is also blasted right in its way. Hot air is less dense, thats part of the reason why dyno runs are done with the hood up, so you can draw good ambient air. im keeping the stock intake.

It's actually about 2.5", which is the average size of an aftermarket NA intake pipe.

Actually the entire intake system of your average NA car is designed for low noise, not performance. If you look at the OEM intake assembly BEFORE the air filter, all you have is what comes down to a small, 2" opening that splits into a resonator box mounted behind the bumper; this box does nothing but silence the air rushing through - and it somewhat slows the air down due to its design.

The "intake velocity" idea is somewhat true, but if you look at the edge of the airbox that leads to the MAFS, it's a right angle 90 degree edge. When talking airflow, that adds turbulence when compared to a velocity stack that other aftermarket intakes (i.e. Stillen, JWT) use. A velocity stack - similar to what tuned carb motors have - is smooth and has a defined radius which aids in streaming the air smoothly into the intake.

Also, not that the 2 inch molded piping BEFORE tha airbox opens freely into the large airbox assembly. This drastic change in size slows down the air also. Finally, the OEM intake tube itself isn't a continuous shape - it has bends and folds and variations in inner diameter that restric and disturb airflow. Like I said, it's designed to get air to the engine quietly.

True, short ram air filters usually draw a fair amount of hotter air from under the engine bay, but at the same time an aftermarket intake provides a larger area to induce air (360 degree filter) and also routes the air as smoothly as possible to the throttle body due to the aftermarket intake's constant inner diameter. As for heat soak, there are ways to combat this - build or buy an intake box for the filter that shields the filter from nearby heat, or go cold air.

Short ram or not, aftermarket intakes were designed to let the engine breath more, not keep it quiet like OEM units. even if the aftermarket short ram is getting some air from hot sources, it's the lack of restriction (that the OEM unit has) that the aftermarket intake system provides.

BTW Dyno runs aren't all done with the hood up - that's just a "cheater" way to 1) keep the engine cooler while running at high rpm in a stationary position - to produce more power by numbers, and 2) to allow the intake to pull air (cold or not) easier since there's no actual air being pushed toward the car (i.e. while moving).

Finally, if you didn't like the sound of the aftermarket intake, then the OEM unit is perfect for you since it was designed with silence in mind, not performance.

fo real. Makes sense... tx for the explanation. if you had been in my 8th grade chemistry class, my teacher would call you 'Stupendous Answer Man'

LOL, but I wasn't, so call me Raine.

I agree with you 100% bro. But you also failed to mention the crappy EPA regulatory devices and tuning that severly drop HP and consume more fuel"like a EGR/BPT", now why the F@#k do I wan't my engine gaggy off it's own crap "literaly". Only in a Capitalist country. So before getting an intake I would do an EGR block off, free mod, 8 more donkey's, clean air for the engine.