Everything about Intakes (Please help!)

MP3Ben

Member
Here's everything I know about intakes available for our cars:

Injen has a one piece chrome tube CAI, priced between $200-300 (Couldn't find a solid number on this one yet).

AEM has a Short Ram system (posted on the Corksport site)for $205. I trust AEM's name and reputation for making genuine power, but it's still a short ram... :(

Weapon-R has a Dragon Intake for our cars for $215. It's a short Ram system and uses a foam filter. If you want to make it a CAI, you can add the Ram Air kit to it, which encloses the filter and has an extension leading to wherever you want it to, for $75 extra.

MHP has a CAI in three models: chrome (short ram) $180 PLUS the cold air extension $100 (including an AEM water bypass valve). Total is $280. Their Carbon fiber CAI is for $329 (they jacked up the price, I was quoted $300 two days ago...damn), and a limited edition gunmetal version for $379!!! :eek:

From a performance standpoint:

1) Weapon-R uses foam filters, which are very high flow (GOOD). The down side is that a) foam lets in a lot of dirt into the engine, and b) a poor foam filter breaks apart after a while and little bits of foam fly into the engine as well! I assume that this system will have good gains. I don't like the idea of little bits of foam in my engine though.

2) Injen and MHP have very similar designs. The difference is that the Injen system plugs the MAF sensor into the chrome tube (correct me if I am wrong) and the MHP retains the whole stock MAF housing. My question: which design type would theoretically be better? Would simply using the plug-in MAf style be better for flow? Ups? Downs? :confused:

3)AEM is a trusted name, and are well known for developing systems with REAL power gains. However, it's a short ram system, and I'm not too partial to that. Don't you all think CAI are better for performance?

Looks-wise: I think the MHP intakes win hands down for good looks! All of the others feature a very professional look, but MHP's is the best in looks, in my opinion. But it's also EXPENSIVE!

Now, my question is this: since nobody has dyno'ed any of these intakes for power, from a theoretical standpoint, or based upon past experience, which intake would you get if you were me? I'm more performance oriented (and our poor cars are a bit weak in that department, so every hp counts for me!), so any help especially in that area would be nice. :)

I'm favoring the Injen or MHP personally, but that comes down to my above question of performance with different MAF setups since the rest of the intake design is very close.

Now I've heard before that Injen intakes are sometimes not the greatest for certain applications (some cars actually LOST power!), but that's just a rumour.

I've never heard of MHP until I got my MP3, so I have no idea what kind of rep they have. Do they tune intakes for real power gains, or do they slap together a custom intake just for looks (to attract us mod-starved folks)and hope for the best?

I've hopefully answered some of your questions on ntakes during my raving here, now can anyone please answer mine? Any opinions are welcome! I'm torn! Please help!!! :confused: :confused: :confused:
 
This is what I've found out, hopefully it'll help...

AEM's short ram intake is supposed to make 5-7 hp (according to them). They didn't say whether it was dyno proven or what. I asked them if the short ram set-up screwed with the ECU any and the guy I talked to didn't know. The reason I asked was because from what I've heard from Racing Beat, Mazda scrapped the intake that was on the MP3 test car because the hot air from the engine bay screwed the ECU up. Plus, it didn't really do much for hp.

The MHP CAI I saw looks alright. It comes with it's own section of pipe for the MAF from what they told me. They also it makes 5-7 more hp, not dyno tested. The only thing I saw that kind of erks me about their CAI is that the AEM By-pass valve is sitting right on top of the filter (from the pictures I've seen on this site). That kind of defeats the purpose of having the by-pass valve cause in the tests I saw in a magazine, the intake sucked water up about a foot of hose before the valve opened. I don't think the valve would be as effective if it sits on top of the filter.

I haven't heard anything about the Injen or Weapon R intakes.

Hope that helps some... :cool:
 
Thanks for the info! I remember reading about the short ram on the Racing Beat site a while back too. I think we have an intake air temp sensor, and hot air screws up the ECU's calculations or something. :( Also, the lack of increased power you noted above may partially be due to drawing the hot air from under the hood too.

As for the MHP, to solve the problem of the AEM water bypass valve being too close to the filter to be any good, I was planning to mount the bypass valve right in front of the MAF instead of on the other end of the elbow closest to the filter.

Of course, that's assuming that the bypass valve is thin enough to be able to fit there without causing the elbow tube to be so out of place that it won't fit into the fender well. I also considered shortening the tube a little to make this arrangement work if necessary That may help some (gives a few more inches (maybe 6-8?) of space between a possibly submerged filter and the bypass valve).

Well, the claims of power increases seem balanced so far...anyone else have info?

:D
 
That's a good idea (switching the pipe around). I was gonna ask them if there was a better place up-stream for the by-pass filter.
 
Oh just another FYI...if anyone's ordering from MHP, I noticed their Shopping Cart isn't encrypted at all! I was about to order when I noticed it so I didn't submit. I'm not worried about the MHP people doing fishy things, but it's not safe to put credit card info on the Net without at least SOME form of encryption in place. I mailed them for alternative ordering methods...maybe by phone is better? E-mail?
 
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