Unpopular opinion: Cold air intakes are mostly a waste of money on modern cars

I was dead set on getting one for my 2018 Civic until a mechanic buddy showed me the stock airbox actually pulls from outside the engine bay just fine. We ran a 3-race pull on his dyno and the difference was literally 2 horsepower. Has anyone else tested their mods back to back and been let down?

2 comments

2 Comments

allen.quinn10d ago

Had the same wake-up call with my old Mustang. I was sure a cold air intake and a tune would bump me up a good 20 horses. Spent the money on a quality kit, installed it myself, and took it to a local dyno day. The gain was 4 horsepower and the air/fuel ratio actually leaned out in a way that made me nervous. I called a guy who used to race professionally and he told me the factory intake on my car was already a cold air design, just with a silencer box attached. Ended up pulling the CAI off and putting it on Craigslist. That experience taught me to either trust the engineers who spent millions developing the car, or do real back-to-back testing before buying parts. You saved yourself a lot of money and headache.

drew_west6d agoMost Upvoted

And that's exactly what happened with my buddy's WRX, the guy was dead set that a blow-off valve would make his car sound like a rally monster. He spends like 200 bucks on this fancy one, installs it in his driveway, and the car starts running like garbage, stumbling at idle and bucking between shifts. Turns out the stock BPV works fine and the aftermarket one was just dumping metered air, messing up the fuel trims. He spent the next two weekends on forums trying to tune it out with a laptop and a cable, finally just put the stock part back on and sold the BOV for like fifty bucks. Its always the little things that sound cool on paper but just wreck the whole driving experience in real life.