Vote Please

[Trog]

Which is better, cold air system or stock air box?

[old man neri]

What is your objective? LCF (Look Cool Factor), noise, performance?......

[burgermeister]

I like the stock air box, both looks and function. Never been a big fan of K&N filters - on the one that came with my car (replacement for stock filter), holding it up to the light, I could see lots of tiny, tiny holes in the foam. I live on a sometimes quite dusty dirt road, so I'm very concerned with proper filtering ...

Also, it looks like you have a hot wire MAF of sorts? What sort of adaptation is it? I'm interested - flapper boxes seem silly, but $2-3K on an aftermarket MAF seems expensive ...
At any rate, K&N filter oil can wreck those very easily. A friend at a car OEM (design engineer for airboxes and filters) dealt with lots of warranty claims where folks replaced the stock filter with an overzealously oiled K&N and then set off emissions codes... generally required a new MAF sensor to fix.

[Jays72T]

The CAS looks better but might be sucking in a lot of hot air.

[jtratza]

Quote:
"At any rate, K&N filter oil can wreck those very easily. A friend at a car OEM (design engineer for airboxes and filters) dealt with lots of warranty claims where folks replaced the stock filter with an overzealously oiled K&N and then set off emissions codes... generally required a new MAF sensor to fix."

I've got over 120,000 miles on my conversion to a MAF hot wire system with K&N and no damage at all to the hot wire nor degradation to the emissions checks. In fact it has been way better than the emission standards. I'd be happy to post them if requested since I just passed again and with a set or Daugherty cams which should have had an effect on the results but did not.

[Trog]

Originally Posted by burgermeister

I like the stock air box, both looks and function. Never been a big fan of K&N filters - on the one that came with my car (replacement for stock filter), holding it up to the light, I could see lots of tiny, tiny holes in the foam. I live on a sometimes quite dusty dirt road, so I'm very concerned with proper filtering ...

Also, it looks like you have a hot wire MAF of sorts? What sort of adaptation is it? I'm interested - flapper boxes seem silly, but $2-3K on an aftermarket MAF seems expensive ...
At any rate, K&N filter oil can wreck those very easily. A friend at a car OEM (design engineer for airboxes and filters) dealt with lots of warranty claims where folks replaced the stock filter with an overzealously oiled K&N and then set off emissions codes... generally required a new MAF sensor to fix.

It's a "Vitesse" MAF. Check out their website for current pricing.
http://www.vitesseracing.com/

I'm kinda leaning towards the stock air-box and will probably get a K&N for it. Lightly oiled, I don't think the MAF will be at any risk.

[Quicksilver]

Originally Posted by jtratza

Quote:
"At any rate, K&N filter oil can wreck those very easily. A friend at a car OEM (design engineer for airboxes and filters) dealt with lots of warranty claims where folks replaced the stock filter with an overzealously oiled K&N and then set off emissions codes... generally required a new MAF sensor to fix."

I've got over 120,000 miles on my conversion to a MAF hot wire system with K&N and no damage at all to the hot wire nor degradation to the emissions checks. In fact it has been way better than the emission standards. I'd be happy to post them if requested since I just passed again and with a set or Daugherty cams which should have had an effect on the results but did not.

The local Porsche dealership reports a number of problems with K&N airfilters and the stock MAF sensor. This is only with the later models that have a hot wire MAF. They reported that they have had a few MAFs that required replacement that wasn't covered by the warranty. (Jeeze that would sting!) The oil from the filter redeposits on the wire and changes the heat loss rate to the surrounding air.

The stock barn door MAF wouldn't be effected by any excess oil being transferred into the system so a K&N on it would depend on your personal tastes.

BTW - Jerry Woods and Bruce Anderson report that there is exactly zero horsepower to be found in the MAF. In fact they were asked by Autothority to test their MAF and it recorded a 5 HP loss on Jerry's dyno. I would expect it to increase the intake noise which some people might find to be cool.
They also mentioned that the place to find power on the 3.2 was on the exhaust side. They feel that the stock manifold arrangement keeps about 20+ HP bottled up in the engine.

[unclebilly]

A more intellegent way to determine which is better might be to pay for some dyno time. Voting on the better system reeks of playground politics...

[cdrik915]

I've done a mistake.Sorry.

I prefer factory air-box.

[Trog]

Bonjour Cdrik915, what is it you got there? Looks the business!


In respect to the 'vote', all I'm considering at this time is the aesthetics.

[Jakester1168]

I am considering the same two choices...I currently have the stock airbox with a K&N filter, but recently ordered a 4 1/2 - 5" long K&N cone to attach to my stock MAF (will extend straight off of the MAF, HOPEFULLY)...personally I like the look of the short cone and if there are any "performance" sounds emanating from it, that's just a bonus.

[Trog]

Christian,

I can confirm that you'll enjoy wonderful sounds from the cold-air-system. I gutted the interior of the factory air-box to minimize any restrictions, so performance issues are minimized.

My only concern with the cold-air-system is the risk of injesting water when driving in the rain.

On a side note, it's a bit contradictory to call the system "Cold-air" given that it's sitting directly above the head. Perhaps we should consider another name for it?

[Quicksilver]

Originally Posted by Trog

Christian,

I can confirm that you'll enjoy wonderful sounds from the cold-air-system. I gutted the interior of the factory air-box to minimize any restrictions, so performance issues are minimized.

My only concern with the cold-air-system is the risk of injesting water when driving in the rain.

On a side note, it's a bit contradictory to call the system "Cold-air" given that it's sitting directly above the head. Perhaps we should consider another name for it?

Ingesting water into the intake isn't a problem unless you are talking about mass quantities of it. A bit of rain is just a little free water injection. If you pour water in all at once you might knock a bunch of carbon deposits loose which could damage something. If you poured a gallon in all at once you could hydro lock the motor which would destroy it. None of these are an issue unless you try the U-boat commander scene out of Risky Business.