autobred

when I wash my car, I do see soap stains around the shock towers and along the inside fenders but nothing around the CAI oem box. As you said an aftermarket CAI will seal itself against the hood liner and not against the open hood vents. Speaking of, I took my engine cover off. To let the hood vents work more efficient in extracting engine bay heat as they were intended for.

2011BlackStang5.0

So Most mordern cars have cold air intake so I have always considered this to be mod that may not be quite worth the amount of money they charge for the CAI kits. I was checking out FRPP website, I did what they did with the K&N free flow filter. Most filters use the exact same route to push the air to the filter element, if the intake duct is the same size as what does a larger filter do for you? Probably nothing as the amount air getting to the filter does not go up that much. If you are worried about water, I believe the K&N filter with a tune gives you a slight increase in HP the site claims 16 HP. I did not do the tune on mine, as it limits me to using 91 Octane only. Anyway, what you should look at is the pressure drop across the filter, the lower the pressure drop the better air flow. Anyway this is just my opinion, not sure what 5 to 10 extra horses would do when you already have 412 HP stock. On paper atleast.

I wonder if someone has done thermal imaging to actually prove that the CAI's are doing what they say. Since they are open to the engine bay in most cases there is probably a few inches of negative pressure from the engine that causes suction of some hot gases from the engine bay, maybe I am totally wrong, but I am not a believer in CAI's until and unless they are like the JEEP Wrangler where they are extended outside the engine compartment. Anyway enjoy and do some research on pressure drop is what my engineering side says. A tune might do you better than doing the CAI.

Ltngdrvr

Hey, a little water in the filter will be like having vapor injection, help keep the detonation down and that means more timing advance is possible and makes more power!

Rjgogo

I'm curious why you would remove a nice sealed Cold air intake and replace it with an unsealed intake that claims to be a CAI when in fact it allows hot air from the engine compartment to be introduced into the stream and also allows water in.

Unless you are doing a tune, it will do nothing more than remove dollars from your wallet and possibly reduce performance.

The 2013 comes with a CAI that is sealed and takes in only outside air.

I guess never underestimate the power of marketing.

autobred

its amazing how the oem stock box can flow enough to support vortechs 600 HP kit which is plenty for some, I want this kit It should be mentioned though that Brenspeed can squeeze another 80+ HP with an open style Air Intake and there inhouse tune along with this base kit also.

2011mustanggt

I can vouch for the Vortech kit...I have kit #25 installed in early 2011. It is a hoot to drive. I will be installing the Vortech CAI with theBrenspeed tune this year...