Matt Bachand

What is it??

I found a lot of needles and **** on the dirty side of my air cleaner, made me think either

1. a mouse made a home

2. Pine needles fell where the car was parked before I owned her, and they made themselves snug on the dirty side of air cleaner.


I cleaned it up spotless, but there is the large black box between the air cleaner assembly and the air intake...

What is that? And is there room inside there for mousey?

Cleaning procedure??

Thanks!

GolNat

iTrader: (7)

Yea I had acorns in mine after I bought it. That black box is the silencer box. It makes it so that the engine isn't as loud. If you get an intake for it it will remove that. I suppose a mouse could fit up there if the car was sitting long enough for them to make a home!

pwnsauce

cant really answer your question since i have a cai...BUT i wish i could see that mouses face when u start your car lmao

but from what i remember there was a tube by the battery that went up into the filter box then through the filter and down into the throttle body...unless your talking about the filter box im not sure what box ur talking about

SlimRisk

Resonator, silencer, basically what golnat said. Just take off the assembly and hose it down (make sure all sensors are disconnected) and buy a new filter while your at it

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

lots of space in there for strange things to crawl in lol. you can remove it and mount a custom pipe from the filter box to the front of the car by the grill as a hybrid intake if you dont want to replace the whole thing.

Matt Bachand

Thanks guys... What CAI kits do you guys recommend?

SlimRisk

I customized my own using parts from my local auto store. very easy. decently cheap. or get some crappy intake setup from ebay and just put an aem or k&n filter on there and BANG!! no need to drop extra $$ for those stickers on your intake piping lol.

I just got a spectre filter and it works great btw

GolNat

iTrader: (7)

I have an Injen that I got off eBay for 100 used. It has a great sound and can be a CAI or SRI depending what you want but they are expensive brand new which is why I wouldn't buy one. Doing what slimrisk said is the best way if you can't find one cheap or don't want to make one.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

DC sports also has a new cai for our cars auto or manual. and the filter is excellent very similar to aem dryflow.

johndeerebones

Ya, its just a silencer and kind acts like an accumulator for when the throttle is slapped open.

Do hate to break it to all you guys though, cai doesn't do a whole lot more than make more noise. If that's what you are after more power to ya. Show me dyno charts to prove gains....
It may add a couple horsepower, but that is usually at really high rpms where it doesn't matter a whole lot.
Cold air intakes are more of a supporting mod imho

Matt Bachand

I bet CAI makes a difference with a turbo setup where air demand is high and Intake Air Temps come into play....

Some claim MPG??

GolNat

iTrader: (7)

Yea, i did notive a small increase in hp and better throttle response, but that could be in my head!! If you give an engine more air and fuel then you will have more power it's just not much and it is up high. It does make the car sound a lot better especially with a nice muffler.

Also Injen list that there intake is for an automatic but it fit my manual 01 perfect. Maybe it matters with the newer years.

MindBomber

SRI > CAI

Both in terms of functionality and practicality.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

they are pretty similar if not the same on our cars. you gain power across the rpms but lose a bit of midrange compared to stock. it does help in the low end and high end by a few whp and wtq but dont expect to really feel that. i can dig up old dynos if needed but its hardly worth it other than the sound.

johndeerebones

As for the MPG I call BS and will not come off that. More air = more fuel, which means less MPG.

As for the turbo setups thats absolutely right. Same effect as an intercooler. Like I said, supporting mod. As a general rule, every degree you drop the intake charge the combustion temps lower 2 degrees. Cooler equals denser charge equals more O2 per same volume of air. O2 supports combustion yada yada yada.... With all that said, big displacement and diesel turbo setups DO NOT like cotton gauze type filters. The air consumption is so great that it has the same effect on the filter media that compressed air does, only under vacuum.... Paper filters hold up a lot better under those circumstances. Cotton gauze filters came about for the racing world, where #1 it is a controlled environment, and #2 they service their filters non-stop, AND who cares if you dust an engine? At the end of the day it is either getting torn down and rebuilt or even replaced....

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

for mpg, that is not always the case. our cars use nowhere near the amount of air an intake is able to provide, only what it needs. even the stock setup can flow much more air than the engine needs. going from stock to a short ram means you are sucking in warmer air at any given time. warmer air is less dense (lower oxygen content), so the ecu will reduce the amount of fuel to compensate. thus mileage will go up and power will go down. the eco guys call it a warm air intake and use this trick all the time to get better mileage, esp in the summer. a cold air intake would prolly give you the same mileage as stock, since technically the stock intake is a cold air intake too, drawing cool air near the battery rather than next to the engine. if you have a turbo, yeah you might be pushing the limits of the factory airbox and that is where an aftermarket intake would allow more air and more power.

but i will agree cotton gauze filters have no place on a street driven car. AEM does not even stock them anymore and switched to dry paper filters for all their intakes.

MindBomber

On our cars, yes, nothing makes much of an impact.

On other cars, with more powerful engines, the best performing intakes generally have the air box in the stock location. Look at any Spoon, ARC and Mugen intakes.

pwnsauce

i agree with slimrisk...buy an ebay intake and put a k&n or whatever name brand filter on it. i ordered the weapon r filter myself but i hear the AEM dry flow is good too.

and for the benifits of an intake i personally think throttle response was the only thing gained when i put mine on. but still deffinetly worth it. plus that beautiful sound lol

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

the weapon-r intake on an srt-4 made around 30whp lol. that you would notice. the sound is nice on a civic tho, and having a simpler intake without taking up half the engine bay.

pwnsauce

i wish i had an srt4...that thing is beautiful lol and fast

johndeerebones

I'd have one too, if they where anything except a Chrysler product... They are alot better then they were years ago, but they have had some big qaulity demons to overcome...

lowlife9

if your intake was as bad as you say it was i wonder what your cabin filters look like.

pjb3

I agree with everything except I would like to point out that the eco guys are only right at Wide Open Throttle. The formula for engine efficiency/power show that both increase with the compression ratio and cold air acts like an increase in compression. The problem is that when people drive they don't depress the gas pedal to a certain position, they accelerate at a rate that is normal for them. If the warm air causes the engine to make less power (and use less fuel) then they press the gas further to compensate. If there was a fixed stop allowing the throttle to open to a preset amount( such as WOT) then they are correct that less fuel is used because the warm air is less dense but at the same time they make less power. It may be that the eco guys drive in such a way that the difference is minimal but warm air makes an engine less efficient.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

i should point out, the eco guys do not drive normally. there are many documented results of gaining mpg from warm air intakes. i sometimes drive like this too and if you can resist mashing the gas to compensate, you can get a noticable improvement in mileage. my highest overall mpg numbers have been with my aftermarket intake.

but i see what you mean. depending on the car, you could be getting better mileage from a bigger engine than you would with a smaller engine because the smaller engine has to be pushed much harder to perform on the road. same applies to an intake, but on a much smaller scale.