rev up your engines
today I'm going to tell you why not to put cold air intakes on your car, now it's
come to my attention that many people think they can put on a cold air intake
on the car to get more horsepower and have more acceleration, they remove the
factory airbox and the filter, and they replace it with one of these cold air intake systems,
they have claims that they add more horsepower, but listen to me
yes they work on race cars, but race cars are dyno tuned, so everything is set for
the way the vehicle setup, before every race they even reset it to make it run
perfectly, your regular car on the other hand, it's designed by engineers the
airflow that goes through the normal air box was all carefully designed to work
with the mass airflow sensor, to make your car run as best as it possibly can
so if you bypass that system, take out the plastic air box and put in one of
these cold air flow systems, what happens is often the check engine light will
come on, and that's because modifying your airflow that way, often will make
the car pollute more than it's supposed to, turns your check engine light on, can't
get your car inspected, and over the course of time it will actually run worse, over
the years I've had people, a lot of them were younger kids, they'll put these cold air
intake systems on, then they bring the car to me and say, my car isn't
idling right or it's not having the right acceleration, and a lot of it can be
traced with just putting this on, it's changing how your car sucks air in, which
then confuses the computer, which thinks you have the factory air box in
it and you're getting a certain type of flow, now you're getting a different flow,
different air temperatures, it's going to confuse the computer in your car, now yes
really good professional mechanics, they can reprogram your computer to accept
this, but they need a dynamometer, a five gas analyzer, and they got to know how to
reprogram computers, it can be done but you can't just bolt these things on and
think it's going to work right and if you do find a guy who can do all that work
one, it's not going to be cheap, and two, if it's a newer car, it's going to void all
the warranties that you have on that car, now I've personally tested some of these
cold air intake systems on a dynamometer that one of my friends has, and really
one time we found out it actually had a little bit less power,
another time it had a tiny bit more power, but it really doesn't make all
that much difference on a stock car, what I often find is actually occurring is
guys put them on because they look cool, they're colored and they've got chrome
and everything on them, and being less restrictive and more open, they make more
noise and guys like to have a lot of noise in their car sometimes, and it's in
that same respect that guys will put on full flow mufflers and they make a lot
of noise and they like the noise they make, but actually that makes them run
worse too, cause it changes the exhaust pressure, which confuses the computers
now the idea of cold air intake is actually a correct idea, because engines
run better on cold air, but a lot of times when they put these cold air intakes
on, they're actually sucking in hotter air, as in this case, it's sucking in hot
air that's already under the engine, where the old factory system, it's
air intake is way down here, it's sucking cold air that's blowing from in front of
the car, it's actually giving more cold air and then this cold air intake system
does, you have to understand that the engineers at the manufacturers, they're
under intense pressure to get the best gas mileage, the least pollution, the most
power that they can get out of an engine, they spent a lot of time designing the
stuff, and your just taking their stuff off and bolting something on, not such a
smart idea in most cases, so if you want my advice, forget these cold air intakes
leave your factory stock airbox on, you'll be happier in the long run, unless
you like a noisy car that looks cool, so if you never want to miss another one
of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!