Quote:
Originally Posted by Fingie
But many systems are CAI-type from the start (my Celica has the intake pipe in the front)
Some cars with variable intake systems do not like to have a aftermarket filter. It has something to do with air resonance.
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I can believe that. The resonator chambers attached to the stock intake tubes are designed to provide a boost when the cams or intake runners change over... changing the air velocity or air flow ruins the effect. You typically have to design an aftermarket tube to go with the filter to smoothen it out.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jakobnev
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They tested one car with an unspecified "expensive" filter, and the other one was chipped.
When a car is chipped, you've got to retune it for whatever mods are made.
On older circa-90's cars, you could actually gain power from a simple filter swap, but the effects vary so much from car to car that you can't draw conclusions from testing just one car... hell... you can't even draw them from a simple A-B test... you need to do an A-B-A test to eliminate the effects of the car "loosening up" or heat soaking.
I've done dozens of intake mods, and have seen and performed lots of dynos for filters. Simply changing out to a generic pod is typically pointless... and some of them, like Simotas, actually lose power versus stock pretty much all the time. But a good pod will run better than a bad stock system, and a properly designed warm-air or cold-air intake with proper flow will make significant gains in power.
There are dozens upon dozens of dyno-tests, shootouts and hundreds of dynos run by both experts and amateurs that show that intake modifications (sometimes) do make a difference... and yet somehow these guys "prove" they don't with just two sets of dynos with unnamed filters. Yeah... that's believable.
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Increasingly, new cars are tuned specifically to make the best power with the stock system... Nissan's Z-Car and GT-R come to mind... as does the Peugeot/Ford 2.0 TDCI motor... and with complex MAF and MAP sensors and fuel table adjustments on the fly, they'll adapt to any intake you throw at them and either dial back or increase the power to compensate and bring the numbers back to normal. But this is not all new cars... so you really have to research your own personal vehicle to find out what works for it.
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As for the threadstarter's question: No. Don't go Simota. K&N will typically give a little bit of gain... but not enough for what you need.