Anybody use or here anything about those intakes they sell on ebay?? The kits are like $40-60 and look similiar to the high priced ones. Just wondering how they are?? Might save a few dollars if there okay..

 

No advice???

 

when it comes to air dynamics; minute changes can completely destroy a design.

thats of course assuming the big named ones are designed to that level to begin with(probably not...)

anyway; Id personally stay away from all CAI; expensive and cheap. get a popcharger or something similair and call it a day. the Z intake is already cold; by extending the tube your only increasing resistance.

just look at them; the tube is running up through the same path the air was taking before. so whats the benefit other than the minor chance of hydrolock. like sucking on a straw from the bottom or top of a glass; same thing.

increasing the diameter of the existing tube and the flow of the filter are all that mattes; popcharger has proven itself to be the best on dynos; and is in the low 100$ range. not sure if the small savings on ebay are worth that.

 

Thanks.. Great information.

 

The intakes sold on ebay are generic knock offs and you definetly get what you pay for. These kind of intakes are ok for econo-cars and other vehicles not really built for the intent of speed since the stock intake is not made with the intent of increasing hp. With a car like the Z, Evo, G35 the car is made to extract as much power out of the engine as possible and even with a professionally designed and planned intake, or exhaust for that matter, sees little gains.

Take for example the huge rush of companies trying to make exhausts for the Z last year. Quite a few LOST horsepower compared to stock and some made gains of 5-10 HP.

I say you should look at the Blitz SUS Power Intake and the PopCharger.

 

I did a thread about this a LOOOONG time ago, what most people said is not true. We tested all the intakes that the "china" intakes gained the most horsepower. But this was due to lack of filtration on the filter so it let more air in which is good and bad. An intake is no rocket science and its just a piece of tube, which most of these generic intakes are knock off's of the professional ones. Reality is if you can get one cheap, DO IT and put a K&N filter on the end and you will gain a great amount of horsepower and you will spend about $60.00 total. If your trying to save money than this is the way to go. The only difference really is the workmanship on the parts compared to that of AEM, INJEN, etc... You don't get the high quality tubing and the nice washers and nuts. But I wouldn't totally disregard this idea if saving money is a BIG ISSUE...

 

No doubt there are probably a few good Chinese designs on the market. But buyer beware.

We had a company from China send us a bunch of different samples free of charge. We figured what the hell, they were free, and tested them (Subaru Impreza WRX and Mitsubishi EVO 8). Some of these were the "K&N" style and some the Blitz metal style. After about 3 weeks most of the filters fell apart due to the glue holding the filter with the base plate melting. A few (the oil based ones) started breaking apart - I'm pretty sure some of it got ingested into the engine.

My honest opinion is that I'd rather run no filter than risk having a poorly made filter break up into my engine (and turbo for those of you guys that are FI).



Cheers,

Gary
Gruppe-S

 

Also what you don't get even those the intakes generally look the same is the sound resonance.

Slap on an AEM or Injen and slap on any other Cold Air and you can hear the difference.

I've tried all shorts of intakes on my honda civic and you can tell immediately.


Take it from someone a who blew up their engine on a cai. If you buy a cai get a dv too =)