The Roush Cold Air Intake here will be for the 2015 through 2017
EcoBoost truck owners out there who are looking for an extremely popular, no tune required intake
from one of the most trusted names in Ford aftermarket tuning. Now, with this intake,
owners can expect to pick up a little bit more power, a little bit more sound in the process,
all for right around that $400 price point. Installation for the car legal intake will get
a simple one out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter, I would say maybe an hour or so
of your time, but if you hang with me for a bit, I'll walk you through this job later in the video.
So, guys, you are currently looking at one of the most popular intakes available for the 2015
and newer trucks as the 100-plus 5-star reviews would indicate and one, by the way,
that I personally run on my 2017 Raptor. Now, the reason being, it's a simple, no-nonsense intake
that does everything it's supposed to, but without any extra flash or logo stamped all over it. Now,
in fact, I would argue the Roush gives off a very factory-like appearance when installed,
which some owners might really enjoy, whereas other owners might need or want something
that stands out a little bit more under the hood. And if that's the case, good for you,
we have tons of options here on the site that I encourage you to check out instead.
But at its core, the Roush is going to make a little bit more power and a little bit more
sound over the factory sealed intake to the tune of roughly 10 horsepower, 8-pound-feet of torque,
at least according to Roush, when used without a custom tune. Very important here, guys,
no tune required intake. You can run it with a tune if you'd like, but that is not necessary.
And just how does Roush get this extra power out of the intake when compared to your factory air
box? Well, Roush claims you are seeing roughly 31% less restriction with their filter and
intake in place, which, let's be honest, less restriction typically equates to more power,
and that will be the case here with this intake. But power aside, let's talk construction, and
anybody that's familiar with Roush products, you probably already know what I'm gonna say, right?
Awesome build quality, awesome materials, along with an absolutely perfect fit. Now,
you are receiving one of Roush's high flow dry filters with this kit. It is washable.
It is reusable, and there's no need to break out the oil and re-oil everything,
which I know some owners might actually prefer as opposed to going with an oiled filter. Again,
if you prefer an oiled filter for whatever the reason, you can find a bunch of them here
on the site. Along with that filter, you are receiving the roto-molded plastic intake tube
along with all of your couplers and everything needed for the installation.
And more importantly here, the injection-molded air box, which does maintain, by the way,
the use of that factory cold air ducting along with sealing to the hood, thanks to the included
weatherstrip, which is to be installed on the top portion of that air box. Again, this kit is
50-state legal, guys. It is CARB-certified, so truck owners out there in California,
you can install this intake and not catch any flack from the man. But let's move on to the
installation as promised earlier, guys. And this one really shouldn't test you too bad.
That's why the site's gonna go one out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter,
maybe an hour at most, probably a little bit less than that. But here we go. I'm gonna
walk you through this job right now, along with give you a brief tool breakdown. Check it out.
Tools I used for this installation include a 1/4-inch ratchet,
1/4-inch extension, 7-millimeter socket, 8-millimeter socket, 10-millimeter socket,
13-millimeter socket, panel removal tools, and a pair of scissors. All right. Getting started here,
guys. There's gonna be a few different ways to take your stock intake apart. I'm gonna start
by removing the clamps here holding the factory intake in place using our 7-millimeter socket
we told you about earlier. Let's go. All right. So, again, this clamp does feature a 7-millimeter
head, but if you don't have a 7-mill laying around, obviously you can use a flathead as well.
All right. So our third and final clamp is way down in there. Kind of hard to see,
but basically at this point if you wanna get a long extension
with your 7-mill or just a long flathead screwdriver and loosen up our final clamp.
With those three clamps loosened up, now we can unplug our factory intake air temperature sensor
here. We're gonna leave the sensor in for now, but then once the intake is out, we're
gonna transfer that sensor over to our new Roush system. Now we're just gonna go ahead and separate
the factory air box from the bottom portion of the assembly. Simply remove these two clips,
that will free the upper portion of the assembly so it can pull the intake out of the truck.
With the majority of our factory intake out of the truck, now we're gonna work on removing the
snorkel in the lower portion of the air box. Getting started, grab your panel removal tool,
flathead screwdriver, or whatever you have access to and gently remove these two clips.
Now we have our 13-millimeter socket and we're gonna work on this bolt right here.
We're gonna grab our panel removal tool one more time here and separate this harness
from the factory air box.
With everything disconnected, now we can lift up the bottom portion
of our factory air box and snorkel in one piece and remove it from the engine bay.
With our factory intake out, now we have our Roush system on the table here. We haven't assembled it
yet, obviously, but before we do, I do want to transfer over our intake air temperature sensor
from the factory tube over to the new Roush filter assembly. To remove, simply twist and pull. It'll
take a little wiggling. Now we're gonna grab our Roush air box. They do supply us with
some weatherstripping here to be inserted onto the top portion of the air box itself. Again,
that's gonna seal to the underside of your hood to keep all that hot engine
bay air out. So they do give you a little bit extra. You might need to trim some up,
but basically, we're gonna start on one end, work our way around, making sure we seat all
these clips. So insert the clips as you go. You do feel them seat once they reach their position.
And here's a little extra that we are gonna trim off now using a razor blade,
knife, scissors, whatever you have laying around the garage.
Now we're going to install our Roush dry filter onto the filter collar or assembly here.
One thing to note is the orientation of how the filter is going to sit in the air box and how
you actually tighten up your clamp. Now, the reason I say that is once you have the intake
in place fully installed in your truck, down the road, if you ever just wanna pop off the
filter to clean everything out, you wanna make sure you can do it easily without having to
remove everything that you've installed. So we're just gonna get the filter onto the collar here,
making sure to seat our clamp. And then if you'll notice, we have two bolt holes here,
those are gonna rest inside the air box itself. So you'll wanna make sure
that this is gonna be up sitting in the engine bay. We want to make sure we can still access
that clamp. So that looks good to me right there. You want to tighten everything up.
New clamps are actually 8-millimeters and not 7, so just make the change there.
Now I'm gonna grab our assembled filter and collar and insert it into our Roush air box here,
making note of the two holes as that's where the filter is gonna live.
And we'll take our two M8 bolts that Roush includes with the kit and start those by hand.
For our next step, we're gonna grab our 10-millimeter deep socket and
tighten up the 2 M8 bolts included with the kit.
Now we're gonna take all of our couplers and our clamps here and start getting everything in place.
And I like to actually assemble the intake first and drop it in kind of as one unit.
Roush's instructions tell you a little something different. Again,
there's many different ways to skin a cat in this case.
This is just typically how I do it. I find it to be easier, but whatever you guys wanna do at home.
Getting our clamps situated again, we're just slightly snugging these
things up right now because we don't wanna really hammer them home yet,
just so we make sure we can gain access to either nut or the flathead
screw here so we can tighten everything up once it's in the engine bay. Now I'm
gonna just tighten it up enough so it stays in place, but so we can still move it around a bit.
Roush clamps feature a assortment, if you will, of 7 and 8-millimeter bolt heads so
just make sure you got both with you because you will be switching back and forth quite a bit.
All right. Things are coming together pretty well here,
but now we have to steal our snorkel from the factory air box.
Really not too difficult. There is one screw we need to remove using our 8-millimeter socket.
Now that we have our screw removed, we're gonna pop out the factory snorkel. Unfortunately,
it doesn't just pull right out, so I find using a flathead screwdriver, or in this case, a panel
removal tool to kind of pry it out really helps. With our snorkel removed, go ahead and transfer
it over to the new Roush air box and you can see where that hole needs to line up for the screw.
Once you got it in place, go ahead and start your screw.
Grab your 8-millimeter socket, tighten things up.
At this point I'm just gonna pop back in the intake air temperature sensor. Again,
you can do this at any point, just as long as you do it before the final installation is complete.
Insert and twist.
Now that we have both systems here on the table, you can really get a good sense of what each
system is about and how they're dramatically different. In this corner, our factory air
box with the sealed design, that's not a terrible thing when we're talking about blocking that hot
engine bay air, keeping those intake air temps down. The Roush, on the other hand, is more of
an open enclosure. However, they do include some weatherstripping here to seal this air box to the
underside of that factory hood in an attempt to block out as much hot engine bay air as possible.
But it's what's inside those air boxes that really separates these two systems. Now,
the factory air box, you guys know the deal with these, right? Cheap paper element factory filter,
kind of a one and done deal. Once it's dirty, once a year, toss it,
get a new one. It really doesn't do much for your wallet, A, but B, for performance.
The Roush system, on the other hand, is a reusable high flow filter. It's a dry filter, so there's
no need to oil anything. Simply clean it off with some compressed air and you're good to go. But the
big story inside that air box, again, the Roush dry filter, 31% less restriction compared to that
cheap paper element factory filter we just showed you guys. So less restriction, in this case, means
more power and that's where you're gonna see the big improvement with the Roush system in place.
Piping really isn't all that different compared to the factory intake as you guys can see.
It's not chrome. There's no differences in material, really. There's no logos all over
the place. And that's one thing I do really enjoy about the Roush system. It's all business and they
really made their changes and their improvements to the filter itself. And that's where it matters
most. So now that you know a little bit more about these two systems, what do you say we get this one
in place? We're just about ready to drop the new Roush air box into your engine bay. But before
we do, we've got to make sure we re-install the 13-millimeter nut and grommet that we removed
earlier because the Roush air box is gonna sit on this and it's very important that it's in place.
Get it started by hand. Grab our ratchet.
All right. Now that we have our Roush air box in hand,
we're getting ready to drop it into the engine bay, but a couple of things to keep in mind.
These two little feet here have to seat within these rubber grommets down in the engine bay,
and this indentation right here is actually gonna sit on the grommet
that we just re-installed. So a couple of things to keep in mind once you drop it in.
All right, air box is in. Everything's looking good and now we have our Roush tube.
We're gonna make our connections with our couplers and also make sure our clamps are
situated in a place where we can still access them with either a screwdriver or our socket.
All right. There we go. Our connections are made. At this point, we're just gonna grab
our 7 and 8-millimeter sockets, screwdrivers, whatever you wanna use
and tighten up all of our clamps. Go ahead and tighten up our clamps.
We're gonna do our last 8-millimeter clamp here before we go over to our 7-mill.
Switch it over to our 7-mill, tighten up our last three clamps.
Now we're gonna plug in our intake air temperature sensor. My one gripe
about the Roush is that they don't put it on this side of the intake, but not a big deal.
Re-install our pushpins here for the snorkel.
With those two push pins in place, your installation is complete. Now,
with something like this, it's never a bad idea to go back,
double-check your work, make sure those clamps are tight, and once they are,
go out and enjoy your brand new Roush intake for your 2015 through 2017 EcoBoost F-150 at home.
Hey, we hope you enjoyed this review and install. And keep in mind,
for more cool products and videos like this, keep it right here at americantrucks.com.