ebay is your friend..

keep your eye out on a used cold air intake from a name brand. i got a used air raid intake for $60, an under drive pulley for $50 and a set of 8 iriduim spark plugs for another $40. i am about $300 deep in aftermarket parts but i increased my MPG to about 22 on the freeway, up from 16 when i got the truck. hella worth it.

 

Thank you very very much for the information about the Plenum Gasket. I'm glad that this forum is here and there are knowledgable people onboard. I'm currently not getting any oil loss, but I'll keep an eye on everything and investigate the plenum gasket if I do have any issues.

That milage gain sounds NICE. I'm getting about 18mpg or so on the highway, but man oh man would I like to be back up to 22 like I had on my Toyota. The picture above was long before a ton of work I put into the beast. It was looking pretty decent right before it got stolen, friggen car thieves. They've got a whole nother level of hell reserved. You mentioned installing an Airaid cold air intake system. I got that priced out at $239 or so. Supposedly it creates an additional 11hp or so of gain, although those numbers are always probably out there. How has your airaid intake treated you, and is it nice in construction like rtkota described?

I did infact switch my air filter to a nice K+N one. I didn't notice any gain what so ever in power or effeciency though, which is odd considering just how miserable the condition of the air filter I received the truck with was. I threw it on the ground and a dust cloud burst out.

 

Oh... and another thing...

You mentioned in another forum replacing the intake manifold with an M1 manifold, circumventing the entire plenium gasket issue, and gaining some other benefits that you didn't mention. I also see in your signature that you went that route yourself. Does it deliver a decent boost to performance, and around what does such a modification cost? How hard is the instilation?

 

the m1 upgrade is prolly a good all around core upgrade

its about 200-250 on summitracing.com

http://store.summitracing.com/egnsea...lse&N=+115

either the top or bottom

im not quite sure the difference between square bore flange and spread bore flange

 

The M1 will give yousmoother flow because of the runner design, it also increases airflow to the heads. This will give you an increase in power, but will more-so move the powerband up higher in the RPM's. The downfall to this is you will lose some low end torque. On your engine that may be an issue, the V8's normally have gobs of torque, but lack in the upper ranges, that's why the M1 is such a good upgrade.

None of those manifolds on that Summit page are for our engines, those are for earlierLA style carbed engines. Notice no injector holes. With the installation kit, look to spend about $600-$700 for this upgrade! I'm pretty sure they don't even make one for the 3.9L though. [:'(]

This is what the one I have looks like.


They make 3 different versions of the M1. 2-BBL Non-EGR, 2BBL EGR, and 4BBL. All will work on our trucks. The 2 2BBL's can be used interchangably because even the EGR one comes with a block off for Non-EGR engines, but the Non-EGR is cheaper. The 4BBL has larger runners and openings and is usually used in 408, or Boosted applications with large amounts of boost. Not too many people need the 4BBL, and it can actually hurt your performance if you don't use it in the proper setting.

 

Well that was nice and informative. I was sort of figuring the m1 manifold in conjunction with the cold air intake would take care of everything I need, but it's not sound so. The one vice I had with the purchase of this truck was that it is an automatic. Moving the power band up too high and removing low end torque will really kill the functionality of this beast.

 

I just got a short break from work. Figured I'd research the airaid cold air intake. Here's a picture of it.



I gotta say I'm pretty damn unimpressed, espescially for $200. It almost seems like I could just grab some aluminum piping in the appropriate size, and stick a fancy K+N cone shaped air filter on the end, and get the same thing, for about $70 tops. The design also seems like it would be counter productive to producing additional power, since it's going to pull most of it's air from inside of the engine bay, which is significantly warmer than the stock intakes pull location, which is down by the wheel well to my understanding.

 

I've seen quite a few people make there own intakes with good results. A heat shield helps but it's still not going to get the full affect of a true "cold air" setup. ie: ram air hood etc... Just don't expect any huge gains from a warm...erm...cold air intake. I put one on mine along with a heat shield and could not tell a difference from stock.

 

EDIT:


I had an intereting post about a potential home brew cold air intake. I'm super stoked to make it now, as with a bit of research, it hasn't been done yet, and seems to have a lot of bad *** potential. It'll easily outperform that bull**** airaid product. It's placement is so close to the exhaust system it's laughable. I can only see it delivering a power gain through improved air flow.

The design also aught to easily fit the some other holes already in the design, not require removal of stock air filter box, increase airflow, and deliver colder air.The best part of it all though, is it wouldn't require very much in the way of manufacturing either.


Anyone know the following:

Where do I get DYNO tests done, and what do they run?
Where would I get a large plastic piece custom created, from say, an autocad design?