You are kidding, right?

I agree that the price of most CAIs is high, but that is not to say they do not increase power. Even a home made CAI will give you a greater increase in power and be more noticeable than a fiberglass hood. Anyone who spends $300 on a fiberglass hood and considers it a "performance" mod needs to re-evaluate their thought process.

 

I think you need to reconsider what makes a vehicle faster. A cold air intake is worthless. 2hp on a dyno is a waste of a dyno run. Whats the biggest excuse of truck owners when racing a car.........."I outweigh you by 2000lbs" ...........WEIGHT, WEIGHT, WEIGHT. And for the record, I do not consider a fiberglass hood a performance modification........nor do i consider a cold air intake a mod, or a k&n filter, or underdrive pulleys. i call those things to waste money on. Forgive me if i think bigger than some, but performance to me is cams, shaved heads, roller rocker arms, turbos, superchargers, nitrous, porting/polishing, stroking, etc. the list goes on. Going to advance autoparts or autozone and picking up the new cool shiny intake pipe ranks right behind those that consider window tinting and decals an improvement to performance. Also, in direct response to your question.......maybe you should try putting a CAI on your car on the track for a run, then take it off along with the hood....compare E.T.s What people hate is that you cant see weight reduction on a dyno. Your car can have 300hp. It wont outrun my 180hp R1... WHY?

 

I fully understand the concept of weight reduction. In case you don't know why I go by "gutted" let me show you my cars:

Neon 1:


link in case it doesn't load (it works for me): http://carboneracing.com/trunkview.JPG
Neon 2:



link: http://carboneracing.com/gutted/DSCF0060.JPG

I understand more than most the importance of weight reduction. But to call air intakes, udp's and other bolt ons useless is asinine. These parts by themselves all drop significant amount of time off of your ET.

As I stated, I dropped over .2 from my ET with just the Iceman. I dropped .4 with a udp and a glasspack. That's .6 with just your useless bolt ons! (That is on my old car, new car has CAI, LT header, 2.5" exhaust...) Are you going to make ridiculous power with air intakes? Not on a 2.0, I know. But you gotta start somewhere.

Sorry to hijack the thread.

 

I cannot belive you call cold air useless. First off you dont have to blow $300 dollars on CA when you can just go on EBAY and get a 20 dollar one and get the same performance. Second, carbon fiber is a total waste of moeny, at least for my pidly ****, stop light to stop light crap, the Neon already wighs like a feather. All im saying is that some of us dont need to blow 300 on mods, im happy enough, goin after v6 stangs and other 4 bangers, and GSRs. Thanks for answering my question though. Probably the most entertaining thread on here. Wonder how long it will last.

 

Nick, your pictures didn't post, but folks should be able to click on your website link. And if the Strawberry Terror hadn't been rear ended, you would have probably beat my best time for that season (15.8 @ 82ish)... even with the atx...

I'm now at 135 HP to the wheels with just bolt-on's (I'll find the charts if I ever get my laptop running again...). That's a 24 HP improvement over stock. And with the weight redux I'm finally down under 2300 lbs with driver (stock hood, fenders, etc.). At sea level (assuming I can drive...), that's good for nudging 14's even with street tires. Here at 5000 feet though...

Clem, I agree that the "right" way to build an engine is from the inside out, that's project "B" for the summer (project "A" is my son's car). And I too know the difference weight reduction makes. But your claim that bolt-on's do nothing is simply not true. Being a waste of money is a matter of opinion. $800-1000 on pistons, rods, rings, machine shop work, the necessary timing retard unit, and tuning time to overbore me 0.040" and give me 10.5:1 compression on an otherwise completely stock car wouldn't give me the same gains I have right now with $500 in used, DIY, or otherwise inexpensive bolt-on's. Even with a much bigger cam, Magnum head and (modified) intake manifold, and the computer to allow me to rev high enough to make use of the cam is easily another $600+ including tuning time (and the cam gear to tune with), and not including the $800-1200 I'd want to spend on p/p/reshaping the head. But with the stock exhaust sytem is a major choke point. The stock intake system is very poorly designed. The motor mounts are trash from the factory. For folks just starting or on a pretty tight budget, the basic bolt-on's are worth every penny. We don't all buy our stuff from Autozone and ebay. We aren't all 17 years old.

 

Well i can see i'm the "bad guy" on this thread. Its kinda cool. But yeah. they add a little. Its not really for me though. I guess I should clarify myself further. Its all up to what the individual wants. I'm not a fan of 4 bangers or v6s and never will be. The level of engineering put into these small displacement engines has really taken off and some are actually quite quick for a stock state. However, its not my cup of tea. I'd much rather spend money on major engine work and/or transmission work. I dont call anything that is over 13 seconds in a 1/4 fast. Maybe peppy, but not fast. Thats just me though. Some people look at it differently. Maybe fast for a neon, but thats still not FAST. Im not downing anybody with a neon by the way. The other point I was trying to make was this..........to put a cold air intake on a car is fine, but dont expect a bunch of bolt ons to give you that advertised horsepower or torque (something i've yet to hear mentioned although it is more important) without proper fuel mapping. Putting a different intake, exhaust may help a tiny bit, but it also might hurt unless you have your ECU programmed for it. The little programmers help, but not to the advertised specs in all cases. People have to understand that the manufacturers of these addons dyno test the cars. They do so in ideal conditions or either use correction factors to simulate ideal conditions and with this comes their thousand dollar software to fine tune the car. The programmers out in the stores have general fuel maps. They are by far fully customizable. For those who have actually dynoed their cars before and after and seen horsepower gains, thats good. I'd be interested to know if the torque number changed and how the numbers would change with a totally dyno tuned ECU.

 

well i thought i'd add to what these guys are saying on the weight reduction issue. because udp are not useless, those things weight a good amount and buying the light weight al ones is a good investment. because well your droping weight, and cai are deff not useless as all these guys are saying. i agree they are way to expensive for what little hp you gain. but if you take some exaust pipe and fab your own( like i have done) its a whole lot cheaper then a k&n-iceman ect. and it doesn't look like **** either. and its alot better to have the intake going away from the engine then sitting right on top of it. and not to mention the room your gain by taking all that useless stock airintake **** out. sure v8's make alot of hp, but they better for how much they weight. which is the arguement my dad and i have alot about old cars to new cars. i like the old cars just as much, but they also weight a ton and need alot of hp to get them moving. which is the upside to the "4 banger" very capable of eating a v-8 for breakfest in my opinion. because the power to weight ratio will be on the "4 bangers" side. not to mention the satisfaction you get when you blow by someone with half the cyl. dont get me wrong though not all 4 cyl are going to go out there kicken everyones ***. but on the money issue side you buy a decent 5spd dohc neon lets say 3-4 grand put 1-2 grand into it at the most your looking at 6 grand and your going to have a pretty nice quick car for the money. thats going to be giving 6 and 8's a very good run.

 

Dear god has this thread created a life of its own.

 

haha i do believe it has

 

so i figured it out. lets put a late 60s 426 hemi in a neon, best of bolth worlds... high hp and low weight? or better yet if you want fast just buy a bike. there just a motor with 2 wheels.