Been thinking of adding CAI obviously, but after reading many posts Im not so sure. I am not going to buy a tuner or exhaust so I wonder if it makes much performance difference for the $$. Somebody actually reverted back to stock. Some like drop in high flow filter, some says its actually worse.
Knowing all this, should I bother at all?? ugh

 

I would skip the intake but not the tuner. I ran mine with the tune and intake and then with the tune and stock intake. I really couldn't tell the difference.

 

Intake don't do much on its own. There are engineers at Ford who put significant time into optimizing the stock airbox... it's not surprising it performs well. The intakes out there that require tuning have larger diameter piping which, may, decrease flow resistance and support more power. I've never been an advocate for CAIs.

 

CAI is a waste of mod money.
That is, unless your CAI is connected to a supercharger

 

BUT, they do sound cool!

 

For stock applications, CAI's are worthless.. Meaning the stock motor is only capable of taking in the amount of airflow that it was designed for from the factory.. Anything above that is considered as overkill..
Unless your considering serious mods, such as higher flowing heads, cams, intake manifolds, long tube headers or intend to upgrade to supercharging/turbocharging and nitrous that all require larger amounts of airflow, your much better off sticking with your stock airbox and just getting a performance tune.. As most of the power gains come from the tune by re-mapping the air, fuel, spark and timing curves and not from adding a larger CAI.. Anyway just my $.02

 

I have to clarify my statement about a waste of money.
Performance wise they are not worth the money.
However.....They sure do make the engine bay and motor look cool. That's why I have one.
I love the look. I purchased the steeda CAI and also the tune (required with the steeda CAI). When you add them both at the same time it helps to justify the money for the CAI. It's all about the tune.
The tune would of gave me the same results without the CAI.
But I wanted both. Show and Go. Some CAI do not require a tune. I passed on all of them because I knew I would regret it!!

 

I have looked at CAIs from time to time but the cost to benefit didn't seem to add up. Also our cars already have cold air induction and having the air filter exposed to under hood heat seems counter intuitive. But I decided I could afford to spend $115 and see if one of these is worth doing - https://www.airaid.com/search/product.aspx?prod=450-945
As it turns out it was money well spent. I have no idea if this thing gave me more power but it made a HUGE improvement in throttle response. Plus it looks allot better than the stock tube.


My car is a 2012 auto with a 2.73 rear end I hated how sluggish the car was in traffic. If you have an automatic you know what I am talking about....step on the gas....wait....then wait some more. By the time my car would get moving the hole in traffic I was aiming for had closed up. That problem went away once I installed this part. I should add that I had already installed a K&N filter also had the car serviced for recall #16V248000 which also improved throttle response a little.


Loving my car again.

 

So are you still using K&N filter or stock?

 

K&N Filter. I bought it several years ago mostly because it saves money.

Thinking about this more, the Airaid part makes the transmission downshift faster. Off the line performance is improved but having the transmission do what I want when I want is awesome. The factory part must not allow the transmission to pick up a good vacuum signal.

The factory part is clearly designed to reduce NVH at the cost of driveability.

 

do you have to do anything to compensate for this, idle etc?

 

I'm not sure what you are asking about.

 

Are you just running the Airaid tube with K&N filter, or did you also get a programmer with new calibration tunes included ? As I don't get how just replacing the intake tube would improve throttle response, even by just a little

 

I understand your skepticism, I wasn't expecting too much when I bought the thing. But I'm not making this stuff up. I have a pretty extensive amount of road racing and autox experience. So I have a well tuned "butt dyno" and can tell the difference between wishful thinking and real results.

The only "performance modification" I have made to the engine is the Airaid tube and a K&N filter. Since the K&N filter was installed about two years ago, I am not crediting the improvement to the filter. This car even has the stock mufflers.

I bought this car new 4 years ago and it now has 46K miles. It has never been tuned with the possible exception of what ever the dealer did when they corrected the Downshift recall. That recall was addressed along with the air bag inflator about 4-5 months ago.

I'm not making any increased HP claims, I have no baseline to compare to. Also don't have any before and after drag strip time slips because this is my DD - I already have a racecar. But I have always hated the sluggish way the car changes gears and pulls away from a stop light at part throttle . I mean my 2002 V10 E350 does all of this better. So I gave this a shot and it works for me.

My guess is that a full on CAI probably does the same thing but the cost is just a little less than 3 times as much.

On the negative side, there is a slight resonance starting at 1800 rpms on the high way. It goes away around 2100 or when I turn the radio up a little. Also noticed a resonate vibration when the A/C clutch engages at idle. So the stock air tube was doing something...

 

The stock air tube has a silencer built in.