Cold Air Intake Question

[matt.25]

I have a 2011 V6 and someone was telling me i should get a cold air intake for it. Is it worth it for this truck? Is there any possible gain for getting one? I don't know much about them so I really dont know

 

[lonewolf2873]

There are a TON of posts on this subject.

I hear if you put the stickers in the back window you gain extra 10 hp.

 

[Oilbelcher]

 

[Little Red]

View attachment 35574

Looks legit.

 

[lonewolf2873]

To be serious now, it's personal preference. It's a V6 and with no other supporting mods, IMHO it's not worth. You will notice no more power and gain some sound of motor.

 

[Statcher1]

With the 6. All your really going to gain is sound. You might possible gain some mileage. I know on my wife's 4cyl GMC it picked up a few MPGs. And alittle better throttle response. But zero horse's


Sent from the Rocket in my Pocket

 

[Casper]

On a 6 cyl why not just add a quality drop-in filter (Green maybe) to the exisitng box?

 

[RamRodRic]

buy 1 of your choice.
dyno your truck.
install cai.
reset ecu.
dyno your truck again.
post before and after dyno sheets for all to see.

in a previous life i had the opportunity to dyno a little 2.0 liter motor over 100 times with different mods from mild to wild. on THAT motor a cai gave it a nice mid range-top end bump on the order of 7-12whp on a motor that was only putting down 170whp sae corrected. others with mild bolt-ons were also getting a nice bump. but it depends more on the intake design to begin with. how restrictive it is. the cai reduced flow restrictions which is a good thing. allowed cooler, denser air. also a good thing. the actual length/diameter of the intake tube is just as important. as i understand it, it has to due with resonance tuning. much the same way as header tubes length/diameter and so on. its just as easy to screw up header design as it is intake design.
there is a wealth of info on the web to research but the ONLY way to know for sure is to do it and get the numbers.

 

[Oilbelcher]

To do test properly above, you must reset ECU before doing stock dyno. Otherwise it is an unfair comparison. Modern ECU have learning algorithms that bias settings to economy over time. The test above could yield that HO change from ECU setting alone.

 

[RamRodRic]

the obd2 system i was referring to used a maf with hot wire to determine airflow. modern ecu's use a number of sensors to determine the air/fuel needs of the engine at any given moment.
for instance...if the area of the map that is currently being used calls for a (cruising) 14.7 afr (stoich), it uses info from the the sensors (o2,tps,ect among others) to try to maintain that afr. as throttle position (load) changes so will the demand for fuel because more or less air is being let into the engine. if you've ever seen an actual ecu fueling map you'll notice that as load/rpm increases so does the demand for fuel, going a lot richer than stoich to avoid detonation. in the highest rpm/throttle position of the maps that i was personally tuning, an afr of 11.5 to 1 produced the most power.
under wot, that ecu did not use the o2 sensor at all. it relied on the fuel map and thats what we were tuning in addition to the timing map.
so, theoretically speaking, under normal driving conditions if the DEMAND for air is not increased neither will the fueling. which should lead to no power increase. however, if under wot the airflow IS increased more than stock, fueling will need to be increased to avoid running lean and possible detonation. a way to tune for more fuel is necessary. back in the day, use of an adjustable fuel pressure regulator was common, but to the detriment of fuel economy (running too rich at anything other than wot). these days, a wideband o2 sensor, a way to datalog and an adjustable ecu is a minimum.

sorry for the long dissertation but...

 

[Oilbelcher]

Good info. Yes mods to computer are needed to get benefit out of a CAI. Stock air boxes do have extra air flow headroom built in, providing more air than being called for. This is necessary to ensure that the engine maintains performance and economy under poor maintenance conditions (like the leased car that never changes a filter). Unless other computer mods, I've seen 0 to 2 HP change on my dynos, everything else stock. But that change was only at high RPM, so of no use in everyday driving.

 

[Revo]

I've recently installed a K&N intake on my '14, with a Hemi however. Much deeper tone when you step on it, and noticeable gains in power. If they offer something like this for the V6 model, it may be worth taking a look at.