Are Aftermarket Intakes Even Worth It?

Aftermarket intakes. Everybody wants them, but why? Well, it can be a good way to make a few extra horsepower, make a little bit more noise, and it gives you something nice to look at in your engine bay. Today, I'm gonna show you how to install an aftermarket intake, and along the way, we'll break down what an intake really is. And we'll talk about a few different styles of intakes, along with some pros and cons, so you can pick the right intake for yourself. I'm Zach, and this is Money Pit. Let's do it. So what is an intake system? You know what it is. It's the part that takes in air. It's its face, its breather, it's its suck hole. Now, the stock air box really, really muffles the beautiful sound of our engine sucking in all the air that it needs. You hear that? Me either. Let's go fix that. So air gets sucked in here, as much air as the engine needs, right into this little black box. It enters through this snorkel, which is fed air from over here. It's just reaching for colder air, because the air box itself is mounted right next to the exhaust manifold, which makes a lot of hot air. So cooler air is more dense, and denser air has more oxygen in it, which means we can make more power. More power, baby! But that air needs to be clean. So it's forced through a flat paper air filter in here. Let's open this thing up and look at it. First thing we're gonna do is loosen this hose clamp, and we'll disconnect our mass airflow sensor. And then there are four 10 millimeter screws around the top of the lid that we need to loosen, and then we can take the lid off. Come on, baby. Ah, there's our paper filter. So these are pretty good at their job. Usually easy to replace, keeps maintenance costs down. They're usually pretty restrictive, which is good for cleaning your air, but not great for performance. I literally just replaced this one. I just put it in here. So if any of you guys need a paper air filter, hit me up in the comments. But this lives in this giant, big plastic box that muffles all of our sweet sounds. So it's gotta go. So once the air is all sucked up and filtered, how does the engine know what to do with it? In the case of this Miata and many other cars, we have a mass airflow meter, which is the thing that actually does the measuring of how much air is flowing into the engine. So it can tell the fuel injectors just how much fuel to squirt, along with telling a bunch of other stuff what to do. Lots of cars nowadays will have MAP sensor, which stands for manifold absolute pressure, which means basically it has a pressure sensor in the intake manifold, and then it tells the engine how much air is in there. All right, so let's take this thing off and talk about it. It's just held on by two 10 millimeter little boys right here. Math. Okay, so now we gotta take out the lower part of the box. So to do that, the first thing I'm gonna do is loosen up the snorkel over here. And then it looks like three 12s, nuts and bolts, holding on the lower part of the box. So this is our cruise control setup here, and this is gonna need relocated for the kit we're putting on today. All right, so why do we upgrade our intake system? Well, in theory, it will allow for an increase in airflow in your engine, which means that you can make more power. And since your engine isn't gonna be working as hard to suck air in, you can also gain a little fuel economy. And the filters that aftermarket intakes tend to use usually tend to last a lot longer because they can be cleaned and reused. They also tend to look nicer than the stock intake, and they most definitely sound mad better, yo. Now that all sounds great, right? So why might you not wanna upgrade your intake? Well, for one, if your engine is stock, your stock intake is probably not really much of a restriction. They're pretty well designed for flow these days, especially because that's linked to fuel economy. But it's also important to note that adding an intake might also make it so your car won't pass smog, which is a big deal in some places like California. And if you have a newer car that still has a warranty, you might void that sucker too. So you gotta think about that. Okay, so you're convinced you wanna upgrade it. There are a couple of different types that you can go with, each with some pros and cons. The two primary designations are cold air intake and a short ram intake. So let's take a look at the one that we bought and talk about it. The company that makes this piece is called Racing Beat. They make all sorts of parts for different Mazdas, including the Miata. And they got a pretty good reputation, so I bought their little intake guy. So this thing is short with one nice smooth bend for as little restriction as possible, while still trying to place the filter in the best location available in the Miata's engine bay. In our Miata currently, we just need to get it away from where it is. You can see that where the Miata puts its filter is right on top of the exhaust header. That means there's a lot of heat there and hot air means less oxygen, which means less power, which is obviously bad. So the Racing Beat piece just turns the filter around, which is much better with a lot less heat, a lot more oxygen and more power. This thing will make an additional six wheel horsepower, which is a lot relatively speaking. When you consider that the Miata only makes like a hundred horsepower, that's about 6% of what the car makes, which is actually a pretty good improvement. And it also replaces the old paper filter with this fancy K&N oiled cotton cone filter, which should suck pretty good and sound pretty nice. And these things last pretty much forever because you can clean them and reuse them. Just listen to the difference. Ah. So this thing is actually kind of an interesting little intake because it's again, not really a cold air or a short ram. So a short ram intake is what it says. It's short. A short ram is just trying to remove as much restriction as possible to let the engine gulp in more air into the throttle body. But what if you want less heat and more power, baby? Well, you can go cold air intake, boy. They're designed to totally relocate the air filter with some longer, more intricate aluminum piping. And they'll put the filter as far away from heat as possible like in the fender well or behind the front bumper. With the filter being relocated to these areas, they become more prone to getting caked up with dirt and picking up road debris. Like if you drive through a really deep puddle or a kiddie pool, it's possible to suck enough water up in your engine to hydro lock it. So to know what's out there for your platform and what people like the best, you're gonna have to hit the old Google and check them forums. So there is a potential downside to the pretty aluminum intake pipes we've been talking about. You might actually lose a little bit of throttle response or even a little bit of torque somewhere by replacing your factory pipes. You see this chamber over here? There's a little chamber of secrets. That's what's called a Helmholtz resonance chamber. And a lot of factory intakes have this in some form or another. It's pretty interesting. What it does is it kind of acts like a shock absorber, cushioning all the airwaves in the intake and smoothing out flow, which is good. It can also, if it's tuned correctly to the engine, it can act a little bit like a spring and propel air into the combustion chamber at just the right time to make more power. It also cancels out a little bit of noise, which is not very awesome, but it is very smart. And for two of those reasons, we're gonna let it stay. That's why the Racing Beat piece only goes onto the end and makes power. All right, we've got some stuff taken apart. Anytime that's the case, it's not a bad idea to do a little cleaning while you're in there. All right, we need to remove our cruise control actuator, which looks like two more little bolts. So we're just pulling off the cruise control actuator here because we need to relocate it for our new intake. So these filters, these K&N filters, are cotton-oiled filters. So it comes with this little spray can of oil, and we're just gonna finely mist the oil onto the filter on the outside evenly, and that's it. Then we'll wipe the excess off the rubber parts, and that's ready to install, yeah. So we can snug up our hose clamp over here at the bench. This is a bracket that comes with the Racing Beat intake, which is the method for holding our mass airflow sensor in place. So that's about how it's gonna sit. So we've got this upper support that goes down to the frame rail here. We'll reuse one of our original bolts to hold it in place. And then this support goes to our suspension hardware, and we'll just keep it nice in place. So let's button it up, tighten up down here. So hey, that's it. An intake is installed. Let's fire it up, see how it sounds, and see if we can feel a difference. You ready? Woo! That sounds so much better. You can hear it sucking air in. I love a good induction sound, and now this has one. Oh yeah, that under load going down the road is gonna sound so good. Let's go. All right, so obviously it's not like my expectations are super high. At best, this thing's adding six horsepower, which, you know, isn't a lot. But this is a small car, doesn't weigh a lot, so six horsepower should be a bit of a change. Hopefully we can feel it. Sounds awesome. This thing finally makes a little bit of noise. I think it pulls a little bit harder at the top end. Well, it sounds great, and it feels great. It's not crazy. Don't expect too much from just an intake, especially on a stock engine, but I'm telling you, the sound is worth it alone. Come back tomorrow and check an episode of Up to Speed with my boy James, and then come back the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that. You know why? Because we're releasing content every single day. That's right, baby. Donut every day. Make sure you're subscribed and click that notification bell so you know what's coming. Follow me on Instagram at Zach Jobe to see more of what's going on in the day-to-day with the Miata, and follow Donut on Instagram at Donut Media. We'll see you guys next week.