Aftermarket Manufacturers and  Cold Air Intake Systems  

What are the Manufactures of Cool Air Intake systems doing for your Honda Accord. Well, as you may know, the manufacturer of your automobile usually decided to put noise reduction ahead of maximizing the power of your car. They felt that they can sell more quiet cars than more powerful cars. One of the ways they do this is to decrease the sound of the atmosphere coming into your engine. There are several ways they can do this, but typically it involves restrictions on the intake path before reaching the throttle body or carburetor system. It may consist of air intake pipes that are too small, or baffles in the air intake flow, or bends and kinks, all of which reduce the sucking sound level of the typical air intake system.

• So the people who build air intake systems must design their systems to do the opposite. That is,they must determine how can they maximize the air flow in the intake , with the understanding that it might increase the noise level. They realize that their buyers would gladly trade a little noise for an air intake system that increase power of their car.
• The first step is to design an air intake system with as little restrictions as possible. The new air intake system may be a little larger than the original air intake system or the same size. It usually has a longer air path which allows placing the intake inlet in a colder region of the engine compartment. This combination of cooler air and fewer restrictions with the new air intake design helps regain the horsepower that is typically lost in a factory designed air intake. Once they have the basic design for their air intake system they must test the system on a dynamometer to insure that power is being increased, and find out at what RPM this is happening. Sometimes an air intake system will have power that increases at one RPM with a loss at another. We would usually want an air intake system that increases in horsepower and torque at a low to medium RPM range. This would give the car faster acceleration rather than an increase in top speed. An alternate air intake system could deliver more power at higher RPMs.