Lewisgame wrote:Just a thought on the whole heat soak thingy.
Stock airbox is black correct? Basic physics, school level, Black material absorbs heat more than lighter colours. Easy problem to solve though. Steal your mums roll of tin foil and wrap it up. (Don't expect dinner that evening mind!)
As for under bonnet temps. At slow speeds yes it's going get pretty darn hot. At higher speeds, you'd be surprised how cool it'll be. Afterall, there's some pretty large holes in the front of the car and if you look behind the engine, you can see the road. It's not a sealed bay.
Heatsoak will always be a problem. Once you've sat in traffic for 10 mins and everything gets super hot, that's it, game over. The effort required to then cool back down is going to be a lot! That's why some evo's, scoob's etc will have water jet sprays for the intercooler.
Poor performance, yea, I think Honda spent a fair bit of time and money to get the car to run at it's best with the equipment fitted. Stick a non restrictive/cone filter on, it's going to have to try and compensate within it's set parameters. Ideally it needs to be mapped for best gains. But the gains will only be a few bhp. Not really worth it.
Personally, If you car is highly modded and you rag it round track days, or you wanna impress the ladies with the induction roar doing twit laps of McDonald drive thru. Induction kits will be of benefit.
For everyday use, how Honda designed the car to be, OEM.
The airbox may be black but it's thick enough to keep the air inside cool. Plastic is a medium to poor conductor of heat, hence why it is used for making airboxes. Unlike metal which is used in the AEM intakes which as we all know is an excellent heat conductor (touch your car's bodywork on a warm day)
My own personal experience....
I've had the AEM short ram in my last EP3 from the 2nd day I had it, so it wasn't until I went to sell the car and removed it that I fully appreciated how much better the standard airbox was (yeah sure it sounded epic with the AEM on) but acceleration is much smoother and crisper, only you don't get that enormous boom when the vtec kicks in!
With the AEM on, take the car for a good spirited drive and put your hand on the filter and it'll be quite warm, even the air around it will be quite warm. This is not in any way good for performance. In fact I doubt very much if you would gain anything at all from fitting one, possibly even lose a few ponies!
The verdict: Stick with the standard airbox if you like performance, if you wish to improve on it try the likes of the Hondata airbox mod. All an open cone filter and a big length of metal pipe is going to gain you is noise!! Lots and lots of noise!!! A chav in a shed is not going to beat Mr Honda and his massive R&D team [smilie=karls_thumb.gif]