how do u prevent your car from hydrolocking if u have CAI? someone said something about a bypass valve? how much does that cost? and where wud u get it? will my car hydrolock if i drive in the rain?

 

It's not saying that intakes don't have any impact (read: HP gain at the wheels), what it is saying is that there is no significant gains between aftermarket brands. So, aftermarket brands *do* increase HP over the stock intake (although not tremendous amounts), but they do not differ much between each other.

Regarding what's the point, if you are racing (on the track, I do not in any way condone street racing), every little bit helps. An intake, in conjunction with a header/more free flowing head/exhaust setup, is better than just an intake alone, or the above mods alone. On the track, horsepower is gained over multiple mods, not just single bolt ons.

An intake, alone and by itself, will do the following:
make your car sound more agressive/louder.
have bling factor.
trick you into thinking it is faster than it is.

 

Once the car is moving you have air entering the front of the engine bay through what??? Oh yeah, a radiator, which is essentially a huge heater for the engine bay. All the air coming in is sucked throught it, someone over on yoursciontc.com ran a tempature sensor under the hood for a week or so, reported 1-yes, a huge heat spike when sitting at idle under the hood, and 2- yes, a small dip in temp under the hood when the car was moving, but the air was still 10x hotter than fresh air taken from outside the engine bay.

Your right about most aftermarket brands not differing much in gains, because they're all pretty much the same design in the tC.

Hydrolock is a non-issue with the injen CAI, 95% of any water even in a torrential downpour (of which ive driven through 4 now this summer on the highway with this injen intake), the 5% of slight spray that MIGHT get into the fender well compartment is not going to hydrolock your car. it would LITERALY take submerging the whole damn front of the car and intake filter and gunning the throttle. Water cant be compressed, so when enough of is gets into a cylinder it makes the pressure on the upstroke spike way too high, and you get a blown engine. If your still concerned about it, you can go buy a Bypass Valve, AEM has them i think, but even they demonstrate that it takes submerging the damn intake into a tank of water to make the engine start to suck in water.

 

oliver, you are friekin awesome. i'm now thinking of buying a CAI cuz of the information you put out. good info. and its good to hear directly from somebody that has driven in bad rain.

 

Wonder if TRD is just going to badge another aftermarket performance part made by someone else....

 

Since there is an AEM intake....no.

I'd personally do the Injen CAI with an AEM bypass valve to be safe. The roads in Austin like to cradle water.

 

Wrong Oliver, sure the radiator ovbiously dissipates a good amount of heat thats why its there. However during motion air rushing into the engine bay is more than sufficient to remove most of the latent heat including the heat dissipated by the radiator. This however is very dependent on the speed of the vehicle, during idleing temps rise very quickly. Once in motion over 25 mph temps begin to drop rapidly. The effect of a rush of 25 mph + plus winds on such a small area, the "engine bay" result in a quick but momentary removal of latent heat under the hood. Momentary because once the vehicle speed drops temps rise, however this occurs mainly at 15 mph or less. Tests have been conducted by many individuals including myself. Here is the link.
https://www.scionlife.com/forums/vie...perature+tests

The probe was later placed in the opposite side of the engine bay to eliminate the possibility of temperature differences or pockets of thermal isolation. The results on underhood temperature was the same. At 45 mph underhood temps were the same as the outside air temps. So in reality a CAIs only real advantage is at lower speeds or at aiding launches.

 

Air doesn't just enter through the front of the engine bay, it also enters from the sides, and it also enters from underneath. I doubt the air in the engine bay is anywhere close to 10x hotter. If that were the case, on an 80 degree day, the air temp in side the engine bay would be a blistering 800 degrees. That would be enough to heat up the paint, and cause it to blister, as well as melt most of the plastic inside the engine bay (i.e. the valve cover thingy). On top of that, with *that* amount of heat difference, you would absolutely see more than the 3-4 whp difference between a CAI and SRI. It's possible, but unlikely, that the air in the engine bay during driving speeds is maybe +10 degrees F. That's a very big maybe.

Yuo guys can beleive what you want, but there has *yet* to be any scientific proof that showed a SRI makes significantly less hp than a CAI. Don't beleive me?
Links:
https://www.scionlife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4168
http://www.tprmag.com/issue/1/ca-injen2.shtml ( I posted this earlier)

Those links show you that on two seperate cars (first link is an xB, second I think a civic), two entirely different people, completely objective testers, no intake produced
significantly more WHP than the other, regardless of manufacturer or design.

You can keep drinking the CAI Koolaid if you want, but the fact of the matter is, an aftermarket intake's advantages over the stock result from:

removal of restrictive stock airbox
polished pipe (stock pipe is baffled, resulting in poor airflow)
more free flowing airfilter.

 

I added another link to enlighten him

 

^^I saw that. I was looking for that exact link, and couldn't remember where it was. Good looking out

 

TRD intake is the AEM intake..... its sold by TRD and built from AEM

 

late post, but Sparks Toyota didn't have that TRD intake posted until recently. They only had the Injen one.

 

And I would like to know how people know that the TRD intake is a rebadged AEM. I think it is but there's no proof is there?

If there is it'd be nice to share.

And reasoning and deduction does not count as proof.

 

i see some good information around here....

interesting

 

Guys, guys, I'm not saying otherwise man. I said exactly what your saying about the aftermarket intake's advantages over the stock, the only difference being that a CAI gets cooler air (I'll even throw in "at LOW speeds") than a Short Ram Intake is going to give. Thus, both types of intakes being equal, the CAI would win by a small margin ONLY BECAUSE it gets cooler air when the temps spike at idle or low speeds.

I still maintain that the temperture under the hood is never going to be the same as outside, you have a radiator heating the air coming in the front, granted, you have an open bottom, but this isnt' a reverse induction system here or something. There's an engine underneath producing a ton of heat, more under load than at idle. The guy who mesured the temps underneath the hood placed the probe right around the throttle body, behind the engine, and reported the temps there never got within 20 degree's of the outside tempature. You can't honesly say that the CAI doesnt' have a SLIGHT advantage over the SRI, they are equal in all respects EXCEPT for the fact that the CAI gets cooler air while the car is going slow, at idle, or under full load for that matter.[/quote]

 

^^ fair enough
For me, I only see the CAI being of benefit if you are runnign the 1/4 mile. the reason being that with all the idling while waitiing, and staging, ambient temperatures are really high, and heat soak becomes a tremendous issue.

 

And this is to measure what? Neither a CAI or Short Ram pulls air from behind the engine, so why measure from there. The test that was done on this board by acasanova, I believe his temp reading was right on the SRI filter, not back behind the engine. Of course the air behind the engine is hotter, common sense ought to come into play sometimes.

 

Yup was on the SRI filter, as well as on a similar location on the other side of the engine bay. Oliver man,lol the space in the engine bay is very small and so is the amount of heat generated in contrast to the volume of air rushing in at speed 25mph plus. At 45mph temperatures in the engine bay are almost as cool as the outside air,`however lol the fun stops when you idle. lol

 

ahh i get ya...thanks for the info...umm i also had another question...its about that TRD filter that replaces the cotton one thats stock...i think the TRD one costs about $60. I kno that FRAM and other companies use them too...do thay actually do aything? do they make the intake less restrictive by replacing the cotton filter???...thanks for all the info

 

you're quite welcome.

regarding the TRD filter...I haven't seen them, nor read anything about them, so I don't have any first hand info on them, but I'm speculating that they wouldn't help that much. The reason is that the stock intake is restrictive at the inbox itself (an enclosed filter will *always* be more restrictive than an open one...try breathing through a straw, and see if it's more difficult than normal breathing. But lets say for a minute that it's not. The stock intake still has that baffled inlet pipe, and that too hinders airflow into the combustion chamber.

Maybe someone else can comment on it, but again, given the above restrictions, I see that TRD filter more as a marketing gimmick than an actual performance mod.