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So I have been looking all over the place and found a lot of threads saying that a new intake system will improve miles and HP, but on the same ones there are arguments saying that that is not true. I want to make my car more economic, a little more powerful, and have a little better sound. I'm not looking to spend a small fortune, it's my first car and I'm not really going to see much return from my upgrades. So what can I do to acheive this? Right now I have the stok intake box removed up until the filter. I haven't checked the mileage but from the way I'm driving to hear the rumble, I'm suckin fuel.

 
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An air intake will help sound and should help mpg and hp, but not by much. If you want to improve mpg and hp, you have to make your car more efficient. Delete a/c and p/s, remove your interior, go on a diet, change your air filter, plugs, oil and o2 sensors regularly.

 
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technically its true, but only if you drive conservatively. an intake/exhaust/header setup will make the car run a bit leaner in the summer, since it is already set so rich from the factory. but in winter you could have the opposite effect because the air will be more dense and therefore more fuel will be used (but performance will also improve). You cannot really have both together. and we are only talking a 2whp improvement.

 
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Okay, so, could you explain a couple things? By rich you mean what? And i wanna clarify something, a cold air intake brings in cold air which is dencer so it makes the engine wormk harder hense the added power, a short ram takes in hot air because it's in the engine bay, but it adds more power because it can pull in more air?? My final thought, will what i've done, removing that big intake box, hurt my engine? I havent removed the filter, just all of the piping before it. The egine heat hasn't seemed to change and neither has my gas mileage, besides the fact that when i full thrttle it sucks it.

 
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rich as in more fuel than needed for the amount of air inside. for some reason honda set it like that.
what do you mean by making the engine work harder with more "cold" air?...
engines will work harder if you push throttle more or if you apply more load like going uphill...

 
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cold and warm air on our cars means a difference of maybe 2hp if that. not even worth considering. a short pipe means the air is not heated as much as it travels thru the pipe. cold air the pipe is longer so the air will get warmer before reaching engine. at best you could see 20F drop in intake air temp with a cold air, which would yield roughly 2hp gain and slightly worse gas mileage since more fuel will be needed.

 
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I read somewhere that cold air was denser so it made the engine work harder to pump out more hp. From the sounds of it that isn't true though?

 
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cold air is denser so there is more oxygen per cubic area. that means the engine sensors will detect that and adjust the air/fuel mix by adding more fuel. in the summer air has less oxygen so the computer injects less fuel. so generally speaking in winter you get more power and worse mpg, in summer you get less power and more mpg.

 
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Ok so there really isn't much worth doing to it if I am not tryin to drop a fortune on it, besides putting like a K&N filter in intake. Thanks for all of your replies!

 
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yeah i would get any intake and grab aem dryflow filter to fit. those are the best air filter you can buy. dry with no oil and same great filtration as oem.

 
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Thats what I have ^^, I have a like $43 shipped 2.5" cold air intake and with 3" AEM dry flow filter.