Hey, guys.
It's Joe from AmericanTrucks and today, we're gonna be taking a closer look at the JLT Performance
Cold Air Intake, fitting all '18 and newer 2.7 Liter EcoBoost F-150s.
Now, this is gonna be a great option for you if you're looking for a no-tune required open-element
cold air intake to help that EcoBoost breathe a little bit better.
So what do we have going on here with the JLT?
First things first, let's talk a little bit about build quality and this guy is made out
of heavy-duty rotor molded plastic with that black texture finish, fits in the engine bay
perfectly, and it looks right at home.
As far as filters go, you have a choice here, red and blue.
Those are gonna be your oil filters.
White, that is going to be your dry filter.
And the differences here are subtle but they definitely do make a difference.
We're gonna be working with the red oil filter today and that typically will have a little
bit better airflow than a paper element filter.
However, you do lose a little bit of filtration there and that is not the only [inaudible
00:00:56] it comes with in the oiled filter.
This is indefinitely cleanable, which is a plus.
However, you will have to clean it more often than a dry filter.
Now, on dry filtration is gonna be a little bit better, a little bit worse airflow, however.
You won't need to clean it as often.
When you do clean it, you'll need to break out the compressed air and there's only a
finite amount of times you can do that before you have to replace the whole filter altogether.
Now, cleaning the filter is gonna be really, really easy with this setup.
Again, we do have an open element box over there, which gives you direct access to the
clamp holding on the filter.
So if you do ever need to take that out, you can always do that, clean it off, put it right
back in and you're off to the races.
Now, on top of making the filter easy to clean, that is also going to seal against the hood
and keep that filter shielded from any warm air in the engine bay.
And that is exactly what you want.
The JLT Performance isn't going to require you to tune your truck in order to run it,
which is a huge plus in my opinion.
You're gonna see some of those benefits such as small amounts of horsepower, small amounts
of torque, a little bit of induction noise, and a little bit of blow-off noise as well,
without the need to retune that factory ECU.
Now, that's not to say you can't run this with a tune, if you wanted to, you definitely
see some more power out of something like this.
And, in all honesty, these EcoBoosts love to be tuned.
You can make a bunch of power at the cost of a tuner, which is a great return on investment
as well.
This kit is gonna cost you right around that $300 range, which puts it, sort of, in the
middle ground in terms of cold air intakes.
Definitely not the most expensive, not the most budget-friendly either, but this is definitely
gonna be a solid choice in terms of build quality, return on investments, all of that.
Now, before we move on to the install here, one thing I do wanna make a quick note on,
one downside of the JLT is this is not CARB certified.
So if you live in a state that adopts those California admissions standard, this is not
going to pass inspection as it doesn't have a CARB EO number associated with it.
Now, with that said, the install here is gonna be really, really simple, no modifications
required.
For that, I'm gonna give it a one out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter.
It should take you about an hour with nothing but some basic hand tools.
So without any further ado, let me show you what tools you'll need and how it's done.
Tools required for this install are going to include a ratchet, 8 and 7-millimeter sockets,
and while not required, it is very helpful to have a little bit of an extension.
So we're gonna start our install here with the ratchet.
We're gonna use that long extension and the 7-millimeter socket.
First things first, before we give this any turns, we're just gonna take this hose and
pull it out of its mounting point right there.
And then we could take our 7-millimeter socket, put it on the clamp, and loosen that up.
Now we're gonna move behind that air intake tube that we just loosened up, we have to
unplug our intake air temp sensor and that is gonna be really simple.
We're just gonna push down on that release tab and that should slide it right off.
Now, while we're back here, we're gonna put that extension to use and we're gonna reach
way down here to loosen up that clamp going to our other turbo.
We're just gonna unclip the airbox.
I'm just gonna pry on these two clips right in the front and then we can loosen this up.
And we pull that out of the way.
And while we're here, we're gonna grab this old filter as well.
So, now that we have the factory intake removed from our 2.7, I figured now will be the perfect
time to pull out our JLT, put the two on the table next to each other, and highlight some
key differences here.
Now, looks is gonna be a huge difference.
Again, this is gonna be very, very factory, you got the flex pipe, closed box over here.
You get that big intake tube with that red cone filter.
This is going to improve the engine bay looks a lot.
But what I really wanna talk about here it's gonna be functionality.
So let's talk the difference between this oiled and paper filter.
Now, I went through this a little bit earlier, but big differences here you are gonna be
able to clean both of these off.
However, the oiled one is going to last you indefinitely.
Wipe that off.
Re-oil it.
Put it right back in.
You'd be good to go.
Paper, you can clean that off with compressed air but it does have a lifespan, you will
have to replace that eventually.
That will have a little bit better of filtration than this oiled one.
However, the oiled one is gonna have better airflow.
And that is exactly what these EcoBoost trucks need.
On top of that, we're moving from this closed-box design over here over to the open box.
That's going to allow you really easy access to take this filter out, clean it, and put
it right back in.
Now, the last thing I wanna talk about in terms of differences between these two...it's
gonna be the actual intake tube.
If I prop this guy up on its side, you can see just how much bigger that is going to
be than the factory stuff and that is exactly what you want.
On top of that, we're also ditching that flex pipe area on this intake tube over here for
basically a smooth bore.
And that's gonna help with the turbulence in the airflow as it's coming into your motor.
And that is, again, exactly what you want over here with the JLT.
Now, before we bring the JLT back over to our truck, we do have a little bit of prep
work we're gonna do.
We're gonna clamp down these couplers, and make sure they're nice and good to go.
But before we even do that, we have to take out our intake air temperature from the factory
tube and put it into our new JLT.
All we're gonna do is grab our sensor.
We're gonna give that a counterclockwise turn, and that is gonna be a little tough but it
should pull right out and we can transfer it over to our JLT.
Moving over to our JLT, we're just gonna drop that sensor in the grommet that's closest
to the filter itself.
And there's no spin-a-lock feature on this one.
I just feel that's the only way to really get it seated in there.
And we're gonna make sure that little tab there is pointing towards the filter, just
so it lines up with our harness.
And there is one more grommet on this intake tube.
As you'll see, it's back here closer to the turbos a little bit.
That's probably for the 3.5 EcoBoost.
For the 2.7 owners, you're just gonna use this plug in the kit to seal that up.
While we're still on the table we're gonna go ahead and secure these couplers with the
clamps included in the kit.
Just a heads up, these will swap to an 8 millimeter to tighten down.
We're gonna do the same thing for our filter using the largest band clamp in the kit.
The next thing we're gonna have to do is apply the seal to the lower half of our factory
air box.
That's gonna sit on there just like so.
It does have a little bit of adhesive on the back, but they also give me an alcohol wipe
in the kit.
So we're gonna make sure that area is nice and clean first.
Then we can go ahead and drop on the new top half of our airbox.
You wanna make sure these teeth catch in the back of the lower half just to secure it.
And then we can come on the front side and snap down those clips.
Up next is gonna actually be our intake tube.
And that is gonna sit in there just like so.
We need to get these couplers started on the tubes that go to the turbos though, which
can be a little bit of a hassle because these both go different ways, but should be no problem.
Once you have those seated we can go ahead and tighten down those clamps with the final
torque.
We're gonna do the same thing up here at the top.
Now, we can pop that hose back in.
And the last thing you wanna do is plug back in your air intake temperature sensor.
There is one last thing we could do here and that is apply this airbox seal.
It's gonna sit on the intake tube like so.
They do give you a piece of 3M double-sided tape in the kit for that.
So we're just gonna apply that to the seal and drop that [inaudible 00:08:55].
That's gonna do it for my review and install of the JLT Performance Cold Air Intake, fitting
all '18 and newer 2.7 Liter EcoBoost F-150s.
Thank you, guys, for watching.
Keep it right here at AmericanTrucks for all things F-150.