Cutting the hood, and cutting the bumper grill is required. Or you can remove the top half of the grill all together.

 

here is a pic of mine...

 

It's pretty much the same work involved with the Mugen intake, right? (assuming you don't get the mugen hood)

 

You don't need to cut the grill for the Mugen intake. The J's snorkle opening is huge!

 

the throttle response isn't due to the snorkel design...it's the Tsuchinoko chamber that is always full of air that provides instant response to the throttle ....this intake also changes the pitch of the car, it creates a deeper tone than stock...very addicting

 

The restriction on the Dyno is due to the Intake not getting enough air into the TB. You are saying this is due to the chamber and not the snorkle?

To me the intake sounds exactly like stock, only slight intake whistle at 3-4k during certain throttle. Even at full throttle the presense of an intake is not noticeable to me. Open filter intakes like AEM have a much better sound IMO.

 

performance will be different from real time versus dyno conditions....I'm referring to how the chamber performs while actually driving

 

Yes, I believe I started that prior. What I was saying people have used the ARC's "dyno" to determine if its a good intake or not. I used the example of J's intake and its HP lose on a dyno to show that dyno numbers don't mean anything for intakes. But it is odd how an AEM can have 10hp over a J's in a dyno condition...it makes me wonder what the difference in actual driving conditions are.

 

I still think it will show a slight increase on even the dyno, not a decrease.....on my 02 I dyno'd it in virginia beach on terribly humid day, my car had 60k miles on it also at the time....I ended up putting down 209 rwhp ....considering you average 00-02 puts out 180-195....only other contributing mods were my Comptech exhaust, Spoon test pipe, Spoon throttle body....oh yeah, and we can't forget about the Spoon grounding kit

 

Unfortunently when I dyno'd I showed a almost 10hp decrease...same mods just changed the Intake and returned my VAFC. I had it tuned y UltimateLurker (Church Automotive) and he said it was due to the intake being too restrictive, not enough air was being sucked in. This was AEM vs J's. It was a little sad, but at least the J's looks a whole lot better. I'm sure in real world driving conditions the gains would be pretty close to one another (AEM v J's). I suppose that other gains not related to HP should be noted, like how the J's has a slightly better throttle reponse, its quite, and is less prone to heat soak. But is is worth the extra mula? Hehehe