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Cold Air Intakes worthwhile
Greetings All
My son is thinking about spending some of his hard earned summer job money( splitting wood for Dad) on a K&N cold air intake $250 range for his "NEW" 97 awd Blazer. I have seen the ads and done some research but cant decide one way or the other. Anyone have any personal experience with these add ons? They Look to be a good thing but I am always skeptical.
Thanks in advance for any input.
Tracer
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Cold Air Intakes worthwhile
My personal experience with oiled foam filtration is that it isn't as nearly effective as a good paper filter changed regularly. It does have better air flow, but at a price. Wouldn't be worth $250 to me. In fact they couldn't pay me $250 to use one.
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Cold Air Intakes worthwhile
I had one in my F-250 for about 30,000 miles. When it was time to clean it, I went back to paper. I agree with Ken that a paper filter does a better job. Haven't recently checked by mileage but notice no drastic difference in performance. Under heavy acceleration, I think you get a throatier sound out of the KN since more air is passing through. I'd spend my money on something else!
How about one of those boom, boom things that goes in the trunk and sounds like your car is falling apart. I've got one of those things laying around too since my daughter grew-up. I'd sell it for $50.00.
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Cold Air Intakes worthwhile
Some of the cold air intakes improve power by removing other restrictions in the intake piping. With a low restriction intake their is not that much difference between properly sized clean filters. So, you have to judge whether the lower restriction intake is worth the money. I don't run them on any of my vehicles, anymore.
I used K$N filters with a foam over filter on my trucks in Baja Mexico. They worked fine. They probably do flow more at first, but they actually filter better when they get some dirt buildup on them. I have gone back to paper filters, also. I think that I just prefer a filter that you can't see through and oiled filters are messy to service.
I run an oiled foam filter on my dirt bike and it is superior in dirt cleaning to the K$N from what I can tell.
Many new trucks pipe the air intake over into the fenderwell or have a cold air inlet anyway. As I said above, the aftermarket intakes claim to reduce the restrictions, but it is not all about filters and cold air.
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Cold Air Intakes worthwhile
If your son want more air flow. He needs a BHAF. They won't win any beauty contests but they work. Might take a bit of modification but it can be done and for a lot less money. I don't think he will notice much difference as the exhaust needs to be opened up as well.
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Cold Air Intakes worthwhile
I have a K&N on my 96 Impala LT1. doesn't do any thing for milage or HP. Save the money. The big kick came with LT4 heads!
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Cold Air Intakes worthwhile
IMHO it's a coin toss at best.
An improved air flow one end of the system means little without doing anything at the other end. You can't ram more in, than the exhaust allows back out.
In my own toy, errr, ummm, I mean truck, a Ford PSD, I did both ends, a K&N at the front, and a 4" mandrel-bent SS exhaust from the manifold back with no muffler, just a resonator. (A little re-programming occured too.)
It does NOT need one of thoise "boom, boom things that goes in the trunk", above about 1,750rpm it stats getting a little throaty, from about 2,750 up to the governor it can best be described, and is by my neighbours, as "jet wash"......
The $250 air cleaner is a waste of his hard earned bucks if all he's going to do to the truck is that. It won't do much for sound, improved gitty-up-go, or mileage.
I'd be willing to bet he'd be a LOT happier with a $250 stereo in his 'new' ride.
Best of luck.
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Cold Air Intakes worthwhile
One more thing...
Reducing intake and exhaust restriction makes an engine flow air more efficiently. So, it needs more fuel if you take advantage of the increased air flow. You pay for the improved performance potential up front, and then pay every day that you use that potential.
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Cold Air Intakes worthwhile
I have found that on the larger engines most factory intake set up are rather good as far as air flow. On smaller engine v6 and 4 cyl especially they are more restrictive. I made my own air intakes before and have notice more seat of the pants power. I made mine out of 3" PVC piping. I would never spend $250.
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Cold Air Intakes worthwhile
AC5ZO raises an interesting point, fuel economy.
Before I started tinkering with my Ford PSD, it pretty consistently got 15 mpg around town, and 18 mpg on the highway, after changing the exhaust, intake box and some re-programming it now gets 18 in town and 21 or 22 on the highway, roughly a 10% increase in economy.
I'm told this is due to increased efficiency resulting from optimizing the performance.
I suspect a lot of mechanical engineers are over-ruled in the design process by stylists, bean-counters and environmental requirements during the design and manufacturing of a vehicle these days.
I don't think 'souping up' a gas job would do the same thing at all.
I have a friend who runs a family trucking business, he maintains VERY meticulous records on his fleets economy, he swears by synthetics and says he has proven that replacing every fluid in a highway tractor will result in a 9 month payback period and about a 7% savings from then on in fuel, and about 20% in maintenance and break-downs.
Best of luck.
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