Installed the JOEZ intake pipe today. Very easy install. Took me all but 10 minutes to remove the engine covers, remove the old pipe and intall the new one. I also disconnected the Negative battery terminal during the install. After 20 minutes I connected the Negative terminal and started up the car. First thing I noticed was my first attempt to start the car didn't work after resetting the ECU. Second attempt, car started right up. I then noticed that from the drivers door I had no control of the other door windows. I had to go to each car window and push the window button up and down and that for some reason let the drivers side door once again have control of those windows. (weird). I also noticed that even after 20 minutes I didn't lose my radio station presets. I was glad to see that. The only other thing that I seem to lose was the saved setting for the steering wheel position, time and recent destinations on my Nav. Going to the dyno either next week or the week after. Over all my impression of the intake is this.

1. The sound is almost stock with just a tad bit more rumble to it only when under WOT, but much much quieter than an open filter intake. (short ram or CAI)
2. Car "seems" to shift with more authority
3. Can't really tell a power difference, but that is why i'm going to the dyno. When you are measuring gains of less then or around 5hp it's very very hard to tell the difference with a butt dyno. From my experience performance parts tend to make more noise overall and that gives people the perception of it making more power, which of course is not usually the case. Stay tuned. I am expecting between a 2-5hp gain and possibly more when aftermarket drop in filters become available. I'm really positive about this intake setup because it uses the factory air box and doesn't suck in hot engine bay air. Basically the design of this is to better a already great stock intake system for the IS350.
4. The stock intake piping only has the accordian texture on the one end that connects to the air box. Other then that it is very smooth on the inside like the JOEZ intake. The only difference between the JOEZ intake and stock is that the stock tubing seems to be a bit larger in diamer. I measured the stock piping at about .25 inches more at the openings, but that could be because the stock pipe has to enlarge at the ends to slip onto the throttle body and intake box. The only other part that is different is that the stock intake pipe has the silencer box connected to it.
5. I'm not a fan of colored intake hoses, so I'll be replacing the blue ones with black when they arrive.

 

Comparison

 

Inside of the stock intake pipe. Notice it is pretty smooth and that the accordian pleats are only on the one side. You can also see the 2 opening on the inside. One for the vacuum hose and the other for the resonator.

 

Inside of the JOEZ pipe. Very smooth and also anodized inside as well as outside.

 

Installed in the engine bay. Again I'm not a fan of color, so the blue will be replaced with black shortly for the stealthy clean look.

 

Installed with covers in place. Currently you have the option of blue or red sleeves, but black will be a future option. (JOEZ hopes) I ordered my black sleeves from an online intake pipe site and will take photos again once I change out the colors.

 

Great write up! So you musta really been unhappy with the
LMS intake , i take it?

 

Yes I was unhappy with it.
1. Made way too much noise
2. Made negative power on the dyno until I added an additional fan that blew air directly toward the filter and even then only made the same power as my baseline.

I'm not going to say the LMS intake is all bad, but just wasn't right for me. One guy on the boards has the LMS intake and is trapping low 13's at 104mph. He couldn't say if the intake was part of the good runs or not as he didn't run the car bone stock, but with those kind of numbers I would say that in real world high speed driving the LMS intake doesn't appear to be a sloucher.

 

still waiting on joe-z's new dynos...over a week late! lol i still say a completely fabricated snorkle-back system will produce the best gains but thats jus tme.

 

Yes, you may be right, but no one seems to be making one for our car and I'm not a materials engineer so I'm not about to attempt a prototype. I do know that I was not very fond of the way the open filter intake sounded and I can only assume that a true CAI will be just as loud if not louder then the current open filter models available.

 

so it just replaces the stock plasticy pipe with a smooth aluminum piece?

 

Yes it basically provides a smoother air flow passageway and removes the resonator that is part of the factory pipe.

 

It might be my imagination but the JOEZ looks like it's smaller in diameter in the pics?

 

seeing how the stock one is ribbed, the flow rates inside must be a bit slow with all the turbulance, this looks like a fairly inexpensive mod but it will obviously increase intake flow rates, im guessing maybe a small power gain and better throttle response, whenever K&N drop in comes out it will be very interesting

 

Looks good. Thanks for posting the pics and writeup.