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Originally Posted by vsonix  both those links come up as no matches; try different terms  I dunno, a decent CAI and sports exhaust do change the driving charactaristics of the car somewhat even if the overall end HP remains the same, peak torque happens slightly further down the rpm scale and even changing only the exhaust seems to improve the throttle response somewhat. EndTuning who are doing the ECU chips for the Compact Cup in the UK expect that with their remap alone gains of around 15hp can be made, rising to 20-25hp with the a decent CAI (i.e. one with an air feed and a sealed cone such as the Viper) and exhaust, although on older engines these gains will go more towards replacing the original HP the car has lost over time rather than making the car that much faster. However he does agree that the CAI on its own wont do an awful lot. As far as seeing a car with a CAI on it when its up for sale - I would probably take it off and replace it with the factory airbox anyway unless I was selling to someone from a forum or at a meet who is familiar with the car and the care/maintainance I put into it. |
I just went into "advanced search" and did a keyword search for "CAI" in "titles only". Then I did it again with "intake" in "titles only". There were literally pages of threads asking the exact same questions as the OP. Like I said, this topic has been beaten into the ground and the results are always the same. If you or anyone feels like an intake is going to make any noticeable difference or turn your car into a racecar, by all means go for it. I hear they sell cheap, high quality electric superchargers on ebay. You should try one of those too while you're at it. Personally, I think it's pointless on these engines and somewhat laughable.
It's a placebo effect. You install a so called "performance" part on your car. It makes a slightly different sound than you're used to. You drive harder to hear that sound. You THINK your car is faster. You convince yourself that it was worth it by telling the world that it made a HUGE difference when in reality it made little if any difference at all except for increasing the risk of hydrolock and ghettofying your car. Maybe if you close your eyes and wish really hard, you may actually feel a difference
PettitWC(chris), HuGo and Marv17 are three good friends of mine who hydrolocked their M44's with CAI's. HuGo and Marv drove through puddles in SoCal, Chris drove through a flood. There's been a few others on this forum over the years and one can only imagine how many non members it's happened to. In the end, was it worth destroying your engine for a "cool looking" part or a stupid sucking noise?
In my experience, horsepower numbers don't "add up" like you think they do. Just because an intake manufacturer CLAIMS that their product will give you a xxHP increase, doesn't mean it's true. Notice how they all say "up to" and not "at least". Furthermore, if you take a catback system that claims to give you 10hp, an intake that claims to give you 10hp, a header that claims to give you 10hp and a chip that claims to give you 15hp, DOESN'T MEAN you're gonna see a 45hp increase. You're certainly not going to have a 185hp ti, because performance mods don't just "add up" to make a certain hp number. Parts work together, overlap and cancel eachother out. With all those things listed, you may see a 10hp OVERALL increase, but I'm willing to bet that whatever you gain in high end HP, you'll probably lose in low end torque. Do you really think you can "feel" the difference between 140hp and 150hp? I seriously doubt it.
I'm just saying that NA M42's and M44's are well balanced for performance/fuel economy/reliability from the factory. The intakes and exhaust are already really nicely designed. The only way to get significant gains from them is to go forced induction or increase displacement. Metric Mechanic has proven this with their forced induction inspired engines and their bored and stroked 2.1L rally engines both of which will run between 8-10k USD.
You could spend more than the car is worth on bolt-ons and you'll never see 150hp. But hey, everybody has a dream right
Edit; As for your exhaust claims, I'll note that this forum had a Stromung groupbuy a few years back. If I remember correctly, most if not everyone who purchased a 2.25 inch stromung noticed a significant loss in low end torque. A couple people with supercharged ti's purchased the 2.5 inch catback and experienced even greater losses. Fact is, the only benefit of an aftermarket catback on these cars is weight reduction and sound. The factory catback is heavy, but it's weight is low to the ground and probably helps handling.
It sucks man. I sincerely wish I could say that our cars responded well to bolt-on performance mods, but that's not the case. It is what it is. If you want performance, you gotta spend money. If you want a race car, you need a race engine. There's no miracle mod, there's no cheap way out. Keep in mind, when you start messing with factory engineering, things start breaking and reliability goes down the drain. How many races do you think those Compact Cup cars can handle before the engines require a complete teardown and rebuild? Are you prepared to do that with a street car? When you tighten tolerances, you shorten intervals.
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