Greetings,

My best friend was getting a DC sports intake for his IS200t and I took the chance to make some dyno runs bone stock, do some IATs measuring, installed the intake, the the IAT measurement exactly the same again, and then went to the dyno. Here is the video of all the experiment and sound clips! Hope this video is educational

 

I know it's not a 350 but I dyno tested my best friends IS200t stock and then with intake and it gained 17whp

 

If you wanna see actual real world data for stock intake vs CAI, this is what you do.
1) showing ambient air temp reading vs what intake t reading is. Bigger delta will show CAI working (or not working). Same goes for air flow data. Hood needs to be closed for this test.
2) test this on a dyno with a hood closed like it is when you drive.. unless you drive with a hood open!
3) Also, why would you pick the dyno best run out of several, instead of throwing out 1 worst run and averaging out the remaining results to see what the actual performance is?
4) letting it sit at idle for 1-2 minutes would be nice before dyno-ing too. That way you can see what happens when air under the hood is too hot and you launch your car from a traffic light.

There is a reason that RR racing who test everything extensively and in detail, could not recommend any CAIs except stock airbox + high flow filter.

losing 8TRQ even with a hood open on a CAI is a bad sign to be honest. This means it will likely be a lot worse when you close the hood. 😹

 

RR racing doesn't test anything at all. They can't give you any power at all out of their tunes. IS350s make the same power with and without the tune when FBO so... Also, why would I test on a dyno that's standing still with the hood closed. That's not realistic as it's not even receiving the same amount of cold air when running on the road. Do you run on the road without wind shoving in air? I ran all those test, before and after. Both of them were sitting there at idle for like 10 minutes. I stood for a little longer with the intake because I expected it to get hotter and it didn't, it was 2 degrees hotter. As the car started moving the intake started getting even colder than the stock intake. It's in the video, I also pointed at the dash which shows the ambient temperature and then to the intake temperature. I also show the results of each dyno run. In all of the dyno runs there was about a minute of idle while I took some pictures of the chart.

Just look at the video, analyze the charts. It gains 17whp and shifts the powerband a bit higher into the RPMS and you can see it maintains torque higher all the way to 6000RPM. The intake is simply better aerodynamically, it's bigger and straighter than the stock intake. Basically you want to run whatever test you can come up with to try and make it give less power than stock. I can show you 1000 test but if you see one where stock performs better, you'll say stock is better. That my friend, is called biased. I mean, I can tell that you're looking for any detail you can to say the test was wrong. I mean.. use logic, is a long and bigger tube. It WILL lose torque in return of more power and I just showed you that it holds torque over 200lbft up until 6k and with stock it goes under 200lbft at around 5400 or so. I did the tests the same day, like an hour apart except for the dyno runs. The difference in temps between dyno runs was 3 degrees F. It was 80F during the day and 77F during the night.

RR racing and their tests suck. Someone came with a 7400rpm tune they said that the engines will blow and then 2 weeks later they also offer a 7400rpm tune. The have ZEEEEEROOOOOO evidence where there is valve float. I've had my IS350 revving to 7600RPM since 2020 and zero issues. You know why? because my tuner ACTUALLY KNOWS what he's doing and he can tell they're close but not at the limit to cause valve float. Also, another example of "their testing", their supercharged IS350 wouldn't rev beyond 6000rpm because of a reason they never shared. I shared a post of a tuner here with a IS350 with THEIR supercharger revving to 7200rpm and making more power and suddenly 3 hours later that "issue" was solved and they posted new numbers. People have proven over and over again that their tune for the IS350 for example provides 0 power, ZERO. They make 280-290whp FBO and FBO with their tune people are in the 280-290whp range. And if by coincidence it gives even less power with THEIR tune they would give excuses to people it was too hot, the car was running too rich and pulling timing. I saw this a few times in the Facebook groups. Someone also tested stock vs their tune with draggy and again, ZERO improvement in acceleration. Just a little faster BEYOND 100mph for obvious reasons, 4th and 5th are really long in the 2IS and the extra RPMS help by being higher in the rpm range when going to 4th and 5th.

 

they(RR) guarantee you a range of improvement for a specific model... because they did test it. What I said was - they did not recommend any CAI, likely because they could not see any improvement. They do see improvements with a tune (mild) and with a tune+some additional parts like exhaust and/or headers.

.
Is350 tune does not make more power either because toyota tuned it very well or because RR is out of their pay grade to reverse-engineer the tune. However this does not indicated that RR "did not test anything" like you claimed. Tunes on NAs cant easily gain more power because just a tune cant get more air in beyond what was engineered for and designed by the manufacturer. No more air - cant burn more of that sweet fuel to get more power. Simple physics...

However, whether is350 produces or does not produce more power, is IRRELEVANT TO how well designed were your measurements. Did the measurement do enough to justify putting hot air intake to make gazzilion Hp in your head? Sure. Was it enough to correctly measure performance gains in the real world, and consistently? No.

Correct, but at least they will perform in the same environment at the same (hopefully) temperature so you could compare it side by side. Will that be 100% covered testing? No...especially if you care to know the difference, say, at 50 or 70mph.
But, even if your car were to produces 60-70% of max power (due to lack of incoming airflow), that base line is gonna be consistent to prove/disprove that CAI did anything close to what was expected, at least in that regime. The only problem here is that you wont be testing that high airflow regime, in which one of them can show itself to be a better performing option. But, you can design another (highway) test for that and perform some one gear pulls to see what airflow numbers, times and temps are like.

Also, shoving air part is nice, except the stock air-box is gonna delivered that slightly compressed air from the radiator, via scoop, through the piping all the way to the throttle body. Your CAI open box inside the hood is gonna lose some of it (because it leaks into the bay) even though oncoming airstream and the radiator act as an air compressor.

You can compare it if you actually measured the outside air temperature at the moment you were measuring air intake temps. Then the temp differential will tell you whether CAI or stock is better for air delivery, and at which RPMs.

Overall, if you like your CAI, then dont care what I say. Just enjoy it.
But if I were to install it for performance, I would def be measuring the heck out of it to see if it worked or not.
Cheers!

 

@Dani01c I moved your posts to a more appropriate thread. I see you've posted in many threads about this topic, let's contain it here please.

 

Yeah it gains it... with a hood open. For all we know you might be losing power, yet not knowing it.
test it with a hood closed and test it in highway pulls.. It will restrict air flow and since your need to get air from somewhere, you will get it partly from the engine bay (much hotter air) and in part from the remnants of stock airbox (if you left it intact). If you dont have enough air, you will get less air hence less power, with "better" aerodynamics or without it. And if still lacks air, it will create lower pressure which will inevitably suck in more hot air from the bay.

In addition, if your aerodynamics is 5% better throughput-wise, but as a result of it, you are sucking in 10% less dense air (due to higher temperature), you will still make less power. Again, just physics. What I am interested is the end-result.

Looks like you edited your post and enlarged it by a factor of x3, but instead of trying to justify poorly collected data, you should just redo the experiment to see if CAI actually works in the intended conditions (car configured exactly how it normally drives), in the intended manner, and actually delivers the improvement it promises.

I understand your logic and I agree with some of your conclusions. Trouble is - in order to move it from theoretical to practical, we have to measure it faithfully and equally to provide fair grounds for a fair comparison.... that is if you are interested in this.

If you measured it with a hood open and with environmental t and p changing, you lose a fair platform to compare results from. In that case, all conclusions go out the window.

Also, another proof such "ricer" CAI setups dont work - you will never see them being used on any performance vehicles INSIDE THE BAY, like ricers normally install them, unless there is some aerodynamic scoop that feeds that fresh outside air in into that tube. This is how it is done on 911, ferraries, mcLarens and other true high performing sports cars. And none of those, including lexus stock airbox setup, allow it to suck air from inside the bay. This is because engineers are not idiots and know very well that putting hot air in the combustion chamber means higher t of the engine, higher chance of knock, and less power overall.

 

First, if it's so finely tuned by Toyota, why did my IS350 with invidia midpipe and manzo exhaust arrived at the dyno with 260whp/252wtq and left with 293whp/282wtq after the tune. As I said..... in the video I included temperatures at idle standing still in front of the house, hood closed. Stock intake temperatures were hotter. You can see in both videos it was 77 degrees outside in the dash of the car. The delta was worse for the stock intake. What is it that you don't understand here? No air will escape nowhere with the cone air filter. It's literally a vacuum. What ever comes in from the snorkel coming from the grill will be sucked into the engine. All I see is reasons to not believe factors right in front of you. It was loser to ambient temperature standing still, driving slow and driving on the highway and it's evidenced by the dyno results.

 

With more reason.... on the dyno it wasn't even getting air from anywhere at all!!! in other words EVEN HOTTER no cooler air coming in at speed and it still gave more power. So......... let me get this straight... if I test with the hood closed but with a leaf blower blowing at 120mph into the grill, would it be fair or not? If you think it isn't, that's it. You just want to try and do a test that even if it's not realistic it proves you right. I proved with data logs from torque that it's cooler even standing still lol! There's nothing else to prove here regarding hot air and it's evidenced by the dyno sheet. No one, and I mean, NO ONE does dyno tests with the hood closed and also no one does dynotests with a fan that blows winds at 120mph to make it realistic. I won't spend $100 on dyno testing just to prove that open and closed hood will not affect the results lol, that's why I checked intake temperatures. I will however make draggy tests next and see what else people come up with why it's not a valid test even though it's the same day, same temp, same road. Simply what you're proposing is counter productive. Wanting the car to PURPOSEFULLY get hot with the hood closed and now wind coming from anywhere and as I said. I did those on the road as you can see in the video and the stock intake had hotter temperatures in all tests.

 

I think before and after Dragy results would tell a better picture. 5 pulls with stock intake, let it cool, then 5 more with intake. Same road, same direction, 60-130 MPH so that launch/wheelspin won't alter results.

 

Just Googling "dyno hood closed", I see a lot of content including debates on forums about this topic. Lots of people test with it closed. Usually the reason to test with it open is because it is hard to keep things cool without opening the hood.

I think this goes back to the main issue with dyno tests - they are not the same as the real world. You would never know the true effect of tuning or parts without taking measurements on a real road.

 

1) Fine tuned for the existing stock hardware, and not for some arbitrary setup.
2) Because your idea of fine tuning is to get as much power as you "reliably" can (aka no severe knocking or pinging or severe timing cuts).
Toyota's idea of fine tuning is to balance performance, cost and regulation adherence as well, while delivering a stellar reliability for 200k+ miles.
This is by the way is why there are no YT videos of stock RC/IS v6/v8 blowing up everywhere, while there is a ton of such videos on BMWs (not to bash that specific brand). Different margins for reliability and different manufacturing goals lead to a different brand image overall.

Also, it is a well known fact that restricting the exhaust (noise compliance, CAFE compliance or manufacturer noise target ) will lead to less HP. So, putting less restrictive exhaust will give you less back-pressure, and more HP. Intake on the other hand is not as promising, unless you change the filter...

RR gets +25whp with just an exhaust+tune and +44whp on exhaust+headers+tune.
Try tuning the is350 without those aftermarket parts though, and you will see it gain maybe 5-10whp (which is what RR is seeing) on an is350. So, yeah, it is fine-tuned for that stock setup. Can you get a lot more hp, if you add/replace certain parts? Sure...but this is not what I was talking about when I said the car was "fine-tuned".

Seriously though, let's not get too defensive about this. Because when one does, one gets upset, and as a result one stops thinking straight. We need more clarity of thought to get to the truth. If we dont care to measure reality correctly, then let's just stop this, and move on.. because it is impossible ( and wrong) to argue about tastes. However, without correctly measured numbers, tastes and subjectivism is the only thing that is left.

 

Wrong again. Ferrari does. Lambo likely does. McLaren absolutely does that too, and in a proper aerodynamic tunnel with all bells and whistles.. Porsches likely do to.

You do know that those things exist, and car manufacturers that care about top performance/stability at high speeds absolutely have to use them to confirm their designs. It is much cheaper than trying to set up the same thing on track.
So, why saying something so wrong that is so easy to prove wrong?! I dont get it....

Also, keeping the hood open in an aerodynamic tunnel with air moving at 50-60mph... eh... might be a little problematic for the hood...

 

Let's reset this conversation a bit. What is it that we are testing? What is the claim? "CAI is better than stock airbox at making more HP"?
Is that a good starting point?

 

I suppose the entire hood could be removed.

I still find the results of the dyno tests to be interesting. I guess if all tests were done with the hood open it's fine as long as ambient air temps were considered. I was actually surprised to see that it's a fairly divided topic on the internet... some prefer to do the test with the hood closed, while others do not. I think that it's probably advantageous for an open-air cone intake as well.

As for the intake itself, I won't knock it as an intake that creates a meaningful power gain is uncommon. What I question is how the intake alone managed to shift the whole powerband up in the RPMs like that. I would have expected a more subtle change. Any idea how that works?