I was wondering if one mod can hurt another mod. More specifically I just put on a AEM CAI and I'm planning on an exhaust. Nissan has designed this car to work with the intake and exhaust they manufactured. Installing the AEM alone gives you 5.5hp. at the 5500 rpm mark. When the exhaust is changed will that affect the intakes performance or do you just add the hp of the intake and exhaust together and hope that's what you get on the dyno? Sorry for my ignorance...this is pretty new to me. By the way the exhaust that caught my eye is the Fujitsubo. Not a huge gain but it sounds awesome!

 

Finding mods that work well together can be difficult. It depends on the car and the mods themselves. Basically you have a couple options, you can wait till someone else spends the money and finds combos that work (could be a long wait.) You could go with a company you trust, that makes several mods that go together. Or you could do what most people try to do which is make an educated descision on each mod and hope that they work well together. To answer your question yes one mod can work very poorly with another. The best way to minimize this is to go with parts from reputable companies that have dyno proof of their gains. I like AEM and Fujitsobo, they are both respected tuners, and I wouldn't be afraid to buy from either. Injen has just released dyno numbers on their intake and exhaust that were very surprising, I would lean towards their products at this stage of the game simply becaust they are one of the few which have documented sugnificant gains, and the only to do so on a combo of products. That being said there may be an issue with the ECU resetting itself and nullifying gains, in which case you would need to get an ECU as well as soon as one is available. Hope I didn't confuse you with the ECU thing, let me know if I did.
Tony

 

Oh also, you should always take hp claims with a big grain of salt. If an intake, headers and cat back exhaust all claim 10hp each, that does not mean that you will see 30hp on the dyno. These types of mods are all about flowing more air, the air flow sensor see's extra air, and then ECU adds more fuel, which creates a denser intake charge, hence the extra power. Air flow gains aren't accumulative though, just because each product claims to increase flow by 100cfm, that doesen't mean that with all 3 mods your engine will flow an extra 300cfm. They may have increased flow by 175cfm or 225cfm. I pulled these figures out of my butt for explanations sake so don't take them as being all that realistic. Allot of people think that because their K&N filter they bought from pep-boys said that you could gain up to 20hp, and the apc muffler they got said 15hp, and the sparkplug wires said 12hp, that they just gained 47hp, yeah baby! That's just not how it works, those are cheesy mods, and seeing 10 hp on the dyno for those mods would be a very good result!
Hope this helped,
Tony

 

Tony is exactly right. An intake might give you 5hp at 3000rpms and the exhaust might give you 5hp at 5000rpms. So you never have the extra 10hp all at once. The fictional 47hp that Tony was talking about is known often as "Honda Math". Adding the maximum possilbe gains for all your mods as a cumlative total.

 

Yeah, that's pretty good! Hadn't heard that in a long time.

 

That's an awesome explanation. Just what I needed! Thanks so much for the replies!!