I was in AutoZone and noticed they had a Specter CIA kit for $185. There is a mail in rebate for $30 and i get a 10% discount for military/LE. Anyone know anything about these?

 

Made of metal or what?

I made a few custom plastic welded CAIs some time back and have one more left thats 50% done. Just needs sanding and painting and a filter

 

It's. Metal, looks nice too.

 

not worth the price for some tin tube and the filter is undersized and who knows how well it filters

 

metals one heat soak and defeat the purpose of a CAI. Might as well buy one off ebay for 50 bucks if you were going to do that. Thats why all K&Ns or S&Bs and Vararams all plastic

 

heatsoak is overrated, the entire engine is heatsoaked for that matter. you will not see a difference between plastic and metal. the couple feet of tube won't affect the air temp rushing into the tb. u would need a exterior intake and driving 160mph+ to actually benefit from "cold air" intake.

 

If you have a tuner with logging capabilities, look at your IAT sensor temps with a metal versus plastic one. Sure there are other things to consider like length of pipe, ambient air temps, actual driving forward versus sitting and idle.

6.1 intakes are all metal and when guy's race with them they heat soak. There is a reason they literally put bags of ice on their intake to cool it off.

 

I'm totally guessing at the max flow rate but let's say 600 cfm. That's 10 cubic feet of air per second, or 17280 cubic inches per second. A 3-inch diameter intake 3 feet long is 254 cubic inches, meaning the engine flows the volume of the intake tube 68 times per second. I'm no good at calculating velocity but I promise that's some fast-moving air. It isn't hanging around long enough to pick up any heat.

Even at half that figure, heat soak due to the pipe material isn't an issue. Air is an insulator. That's why it requires a radiator-type setup with fins to dissipate heat. It could flow though a pipe that's 400 degrees and it wouldn't pick up any of its heat when it's moving that fast.

You can heat soak the temp sensor at idle, and the incoming air under the hood is hotter than ambient, but once you start moving that problem is gone. It'll take a few more seconds for the temp sensor to read properly after that.

Having said all that, I don't see why anyone makes them out of metal when plastic is easier, cheaper, and works just as well. I picked mine because it was cheapest and it's been fine for almost 5 years now. It never did mount "properly" but I don't care because it's just a pipe with a filter on it, and a heat shield. I would never give anyone hundreds of dollars for an intake.

 

Right, Ill agree with all that but your actual air temps mean nothing when the IAT says it is something else and gives those reading to the PCM. Thats why we use a lower stat (180*) and a powerwire which tricks the PCM be giving it false temps of 22* less than what they actually are to add the "benefit" of a CAI.

 

Spectre filters are crap. They let in a lot of dirt.