Another thing: the AEM pipe never gets hot to the touch..

I'm sure thermal wrap really wouldn't help as much as you think it would for all the effort you'd have to put in to wrap the pipe.. I just drove my car for an hour and no part of the pipe was hot to the touch compared to everything else in the engine bay..

 

not to thread jack.. but for the cali guys

do we have to worry about heat soak with the k&n

and do we have to worry about hydrolock??

 

well if the car sits for while after a long hard drive the pipe will get hot through convection. i wrapped it to protect it from this. didn't work all too well, but if a spray water on it and the water soaks in, then the pipe reduces heat and will take longer to heat up, only really works if you are drag racing and in the pits. the pipe definitely stays cool longer. definitely useless if you are tracking. and if you do track only i would get the k&N. i remember having the K&N and after a god 15-20 min drive in stop and go traffic, the pipe gets warm.

umm, anywhere there is traffic and anywhere you have stop and go traffic.

 

I don't find myself with heat soak issues very often. I have the K&N and live in a pretty hot climate (hot AL summers) and have had very little issue with heat soak. Easy to install and sounds great. I don't think it looks bad at all in the engine bay...

 

Really appreciate all the advice, so OVERALL im here in miami, planning on getting itbs later but for now just want a 300 dollar or so intake. Its hot as hell here as some of you probaly know/hear but in the summer it does rain a lot. What would be best for me ? im thinking about just going AEM an stay out of rain/puddles etc. It seems if i can avoid rain then AEM is deffiantly the way to go

 

Honestly I bet you can swap the 2 and not really notice any difference except for maybe sound (trust me i've had like 5 different intakes) and without a tune you aren't going to notice much between them. One of my buddies lives in Miami and had a CAI and ended up hydrolocking his motor even though there wasn't a crazy amount of water. It can, and has happened. I would hate having to drive down different roads just to try and avoid puddles and stuff, with the K&N you just drive right through them and not have to worry about it. Plus you can just clean the filter instead of having to replace it, and the resale value is very good for the FIPK. You can buy it for less than $250 on ebay brand new and you can sell it for around $200 no problem. Also the heatsoak is not that bad. I live in Kansas and the summers also get hot as hell, I had an insulated OEM airbox with an AUT cooling plate and K&N filter, and it had almost just as much heatsoak as the K&N FIPK and the PRM intake. I think the opposite of most here, I think CAI's look like crap because it makes the engine bay so bare and empty. The FIPK at least uses that room and makes it look a lot better.

Just my .02 cents.

 

I think you are a little off on the resale value of the FiPK first and formost..

I only got $160 for my FiPK and it was in perfect condition.. And most of the offers people gave me were low ball offers of like $100 when I clearly stated $200 firm when mentioning it was for sale..

Secondly, the AEM dryflow filter is reusable.. Its made by K&N and can be cleaned just like a regular K&N filter but it doesn't need to be oiled..

Thirdly.. I wouldn't go about thrashing through puddles whether I had a short ram intake or a cold air intake, but that's just me I guess..

And yesterday after I made my first post I ended up getting caught in a pretty bad storm on my way home.. And yeah I was paranoid as all hell, but I just drove like I normally do in the rain and I was just fine.. The only thing that kind pf annoyed me about getting caught in the rain was the lower intake pipe got dirty from water splashing on it.. So I had to take time to wipe it off because I want to keep it as clean as possible..

Other than that, I think cold air intake is the way to go.. Louisiana is known for it's flash floods and heavy rain as well as hot spring/summer temperatures.. Which is why I went with the V2, but as long as you drive cautiously in the rain (you should already do this anyways) then you have nothing to worry about..

 

Idk i've seen them sell for around $200 shipped on here quite a few times. If you wait long enough you can find a buyer. Also I never said I would just be thrashing through puddles and such on purpose or anything. Sometimes if your driving in the rain and such you may have to go through some puddles to get where you need to go, and driving a few blocks away just to go around it is ridiculous since you will most likely encounter more puddles anyways. I would never drive through even smaller puddles if I had a CAI just to be on the safe side, with the short ram intake I don't have to worry about it near as much, and I just drive through them slowly and go on my way. If it looks decently deep i'm not going to drive through it no matter what though, but that's not the point. If a CAI isn't really going to benfit you much over the FIPK then what's the point of putting another potential problem out there when you don't have to? That's just my view on it.

 

Comparative pictures of my engine bay with both..

Close up




Filter location/air vent



Whole bay shot..

 

I'd recommend reading the countless existing intake threads.

You can't just ford deep water even with the FIPK. Small puddles aren't an issue for my Fujita and the filter is washable. Again, all this has been endlessly covered before. There's no new information in this thread so far and I wouldn't expect anything new to come up. Each person has differing priorities and acceptable risks and needs to make the decision based on that.

Heat soak is frequently brought up -- even in this very thread. Your statement assumes it's a non-issue across the board.

Read the thread(s) and decide for yourself. The info's on the table. You need to make the call based on what matters to you and what risk you're willing to take. If it was a question with a one-size-fits-all answer we'd all be using the same intake.