I had AEM v2 for 2 yrs, loved the sound and the few horses it gave. I got a vented hood this year so I went back to stock in fear of hydrolock. Man, I miss the sound and throttle response. In desparation, I gutted the stock box...wholala, gutted stock box actually sounds and feels similar to AEM, not exactly, but close. So until I 'feel' justified to spend more on a high end intake like J's, I am gonna keep the stock box, perhaps replace with K&N filter.

By the way, short intake doesn't make sense at all because of heat soak, unless for track use with vented hood.

 

oh, no. check on honda-tech.com, in short, the bypass valve will drop some hp.

it's a thing that sit in between two smooth flowing tube with some weird shaped ribbs and foam, the two rubber pieces don't always close seal neither. i had one before. one of the explanation of why it will take away power=the valve disrupt the flow of the air

the reason you will not see alot of gain for intake is partly because honda putted out such a good design on the head flow and stock intake.(and partly because it's a tiny small displacement motor) You will not see a 20 hp gain on a ls1 with a 100 dollar intake.

 

you are right, k&N isn't that good for filtering, but hey, it's a ratio, the more filtering element you put, the more restriction on the flow, vise versa.