Well here's my experience OG RaM. I went with the Airaid because of cost and ease of install. But at the end on the day they are all easy installs. If your are new to DIY heres a great place to start. Ive done CIAs to twin turbos (ram guys dont flip, it was on an Audi). CIAs are not going to give you performance your gonna feel and say "wow". A CIA matched with a free flow exhaust will just make that V8 sound soo sweet. Maybe a little low end, but dont think thats where the $$ goes. We Mopar nation like our motors heard, thats what a CAI will help do. Don't have someone else put in on! It's not hard and will get your hands in your engine! (respect on this site)! Long story short Airaid best for the buck and Volant best looking (enclosed shiny box) its all about keeping cold air in and engine heat out. Good Luck bud

 

A CAI does have advantages, although alone they are minimal, about 8-12 HP gain is what you can expect to see out of one. However, when combined with some other mods such as a ported throttle body, heads or headers, the CAI starts to shine. It actually increases the efficiency of these other mods so the cumulative HP and TQ gains are better than their sum, individually.
However, it's the removal of the very restricting "Hemi" hat that is key to good air intake. That's why the sound is always so much better with a CAI, even if you get one that doesn't flow much better than stock. That big piece of plastic is basically a resonating chamber, there to keep sound and specifically the sound of the EGR valve down. By it's design, it is highly restrictive.

BUILD YOUR OWN and then just pick up a high quality filter like a K&N at the parts store, you can come away with about $20 spent in materials then about $35 on a top quality filter. There is no reason to pay $300 or more for a branded one that will have no better CFM rate than one you can make.

A couple I've made for members:

 

How about the added dirt/silicates your engine will be digesting? Cause that is the other thing you'll be getting.

 

Well there is no question that for the most part, the higher the flow rate, the more contaminants can enter your engine and eventually get into your oil. However, most better quality oiled filters such as the K&N filter almost as well a dry cotton filter WHEN PROPERLY MAINTAINED and yield CFM numbers that are almost 4x better than a stock cotton filter. Although expensive, Amsoil filters actually filter particles BETTER than stock filters while having CFM numbers about on par with the K&N.

I religiously clean my throttle body every 15,000 miles and don't find it any dirtier than any other throttle body I've cleaned for people with a stock intake with similar miles.
I also change my oil (Royal Purple) every 6k miles and don't find my oil to be any dirtier than before I had the CAI.

I have farm property and run very dusty dirt roads in Georgia, so I run a pre-filter on my cone filter. About 25% better filtration with only a 2% sacrifice in flow rate.

Now I won't say there isn't a minute amount of contaminants entering my engine that wouldn't be if I ran a stock box, but I've had trucks and Jeeps with well over 150k on them that have had intakes on them for most of those miles with NO noticeable issues, so I think I'll keep mine, thank you...

 

Unless you do oil analysis you have no clue to how dirty oil is or isn't. Oiled filters have more or less been on their way OUT for some time now in favor of dry filters.I would suggest to anyone using CAI particularly with oiled filters to use a Lab for a few oil analysis to see how good or not the air filter is.Once again for the cost and the hazards of a CAI I won't use one.I am going to remove $300 bucks worth of one(AFE PRO GUARD 7)oiled filter cause I don't trust it on my 03 diesel.I don't trust it and then again they proved NOT to increase H.P. more then a small amount.I like a lot of others got snookered on CAI back in 03./04 before the real facts about them came out.

 

same here, 2 trucks with over 150k on them, a car with 90k all running with an oiled filter. I too will keep my oiled filter on ..

 

Well, the performance shop who designed the custom grind on my CAM spec'd CAI and LT Headers as a pre-requisite. So I figure they must do something.

As far as my oil goes, I've had it tested twice, once in '05 when I ran Mobil 1 and once in '08 after I switched to Royal Purple and ran it for 6k miles. Both tests got a thumbs up in all categories.

A CAI isn't for everyone, I think it got so popular because people believed you were gonna get the performance of $3000 polished heads out of a $300 intake. Ain't gonna happen and I think it would be about the equivalent of a custom tune on a stock truck.
If you don't have mods that will make use of the better breathing, it's a waste of $300 to buy one. But there are some of us who have mods that require we increase the amount of air that we take into our system, just like we NEED that custom tune.

I do agree with you though that technology is showing that dry filters (like the Amsoil) are starting to outperform the oiled ones, but that was not the case over 5 years ago when I bought mine.

 

I have also read posts of 'dusted' engines and high silicate levels on the diesel sites over CAI filters.K&N use to be the worse of the bunch.Its not worth it to me over maybe 8 to 10 h.p. Years back the intakes were very restrictive.I heard all that in 03 with 3rd gen diesels UNTIL some real testing took place.Thats when the high price of a CAI plus the lack of performance was brought to the consumers attention.To me its like a muffler change.Its all NOISE and thats all folks.

 

I think we have your opinion on this matter... LOL...

You can read data that goes one way or the other, people can twist numbers to say anything they want. Funny, but when I was at Daytona for the 500 and had a pass to go down amongst the cars, ALL of them were running intakes... Makes you just wanna say hmmmmm...

But I agree with you in one way, most daily drivers don't need one, nor see enough benefit to justify the cost...

 

I'm sure 'stock'cars were using some sort of intakes.But I bet they have done a lot of research in filters and routing.The sand in the Daytona track is rough on machinery.If it got ingested it must do a lot of engine damage.I do wonder what and who's filters they use and how small a micron rating it takes to keep a engine healthy on the track.