I know what the hemi hat looks like on the inside. And while you only see the bend you fail to take into account the rest of the hemi hat. It's not a free flowing bend or else the hemi hat wouldn't be as large as it is. Most of the air gets disturbed and baffled by the hat

 

I stand corrected... I took a long hard look at the extra hemi hat I have and thier are 4 inlets inside the 90 bend that channel air into baffles...

Im going to cut away the baffles with a sawsal and save the 90 degree bend, I can use the temp sensor and the one bolt hole and reinstall.. Its going to look like crap, no 5.7 Hemi, just 5.7 He....

I will have to patch up the holes on the out side to cover the inlets inside the 90 bend..

I will run a 4 in 4 foot pvc pipe and re use the factery elbows on the air let tube, Im not cuting the air box ( may upgrade to high flow filter )

I took out the inlet tube on the air box and mocked up a heat shield with card board as a template only... this way I can draw air in from the fender and right side of the head light + rad.

Configuring up a heat shield around the air box and washer fluid resvior is going to tricky as I don't know what matterial to use and Im pretty sure no one has thought this out.. I do have 2 hemi air box lids....

To save the effort, I'm starting to see the benifits of going with aftermarket CAI vers my fiddeling around to make things work out of 30 bucks worth of parts....

 

benefits as in it will save you some time, but imo you are not gaining that much other than a sweeter sound, maybe if you've got tons of other mods and a tuner it might help boost it up a little, but it's going to very minimal by itself. Do it yourself and you have the pride you built it, saved $250, and still have the sweet *** sound. You can really do a nice one yourself here's a nice pic of one that I did. I havent made a heat shield for it yet, but its worked out great for me so far.

 

That just PVC?

 

I was fixing to post until I saw you amended your earlier statement. We actually tested the "Hemi Hat" with compressed air years ago at a performance shop I was once affiliated with. Found it to be quite good at baffling the sound of the EGR, but it was quite restrictive.

I've always recommended deleting the Hat, even if you leave the stock air box and filter combo. The "Hemi Hat" is the restrictive part of the stock intake.


To the OP:

Purchasing a K&N or most store bought units is fine, but don't look for any real gains unless you go all the way and do a ported throttle body and free up the exhaust. You may want to consider building your own out of PVC. Parts needed will run you under $25 (plus filter) at any hardware store and it's been found (and tested by yours truly) that a home-made CAI performs just as well as all but the very top end commercially built CAIs (like the $500+ Vararam). Cone filters for your home-made unit will start at about $25 for no-name and about $35-40 for a K&N.

Although I bought a K&N 77 way back in '04 not long after I purchased the truck, I've since made a couple of dozen for people and tested them at no measurable difference than mine, given the same quality filter was used. Truth be told, I've measured air temps at the throttle body slightly cooler in ones I've made out of PVC compared to my $300 K&N. This is because I opted for the model 77 with it's chrome tube, which tends to hold heat a bit more than their plastic tubed model or PVC from the hardware store...