- After market intakes,
everybody wants 'em, but why? Well, it can be a good way to
make a few extra horsepower, make a little bit more noise, (car engine revs) and it gives you something nice to look at in your engine bay. Today I'm gonna show you how to install an aftermarket intake and
along the way we'll break down what an intake really is and we'll talk about a few different styles
of intakes along with some pros and cons so you can pick the
right intake for yourself. I'm Zach and this is Money Pit. Let's do it. (upbeat music) So what is an intake system? You know what it is, it's
the part that takes in air, it's its face, its breather,
it's its suck hole. Now the stock airbox really,
really muffles the beautiful sound of our engine sucking
in all the air that it needs. (car engine revs) You hear that? Me either let's go fix that. So air gets sucked in here, as much air as the engine needs right into this little black box. It enters through this snorkel, which is fed air from over here. It's just reaching for colder
air because the airbox itself is mounted right next
to the exhaust manifold, which makes a lot of hot air. So cooler air is more dense and denser air has more oxygen in it, which means we can make more power. - More power, baby. - But that air needs to be clean. So it's forced through a flat
paper air filter in here. Let's open this thing up and look at it. First thing we're gonna do
is loosen this hose clamp, I'll disconnect our mass air flow sensor, and then there are four
10 millimeter screws around the top of the lid
that we need to loosen and then we can take the lid off. Come on baby. Ah, there's our paper filter. So these are pretty good at their job. Usually easy to replace. It keeps maintenance costs down. They're usually pretty
restrictive which is good for cleaning your air, but
not great for performance. I literally just replaced this one. I just put it in here. So if any of you guys
need a paper air filter, hit me up in the comments. But this lives in this
giant big plastic box that muffles all of our sweet sounds. So it's gotta go. (glass shatters) So once the air is all
sucked up and filtered, how does the engine
know what to do with it? In the case of this Miata
and many other cars, we have a mass air flow meter, which is the thing that
actually does the measuring of how much air is
flowing into the engine. So it can tell the fuel injectors just how much fuel to squirt, along with telling a bunch
of other stuff what to do. Lots of cars nowadays
will have MAP sensor, which stands for manifold
absolute pressure, which means basically
it has a pressure sensor in the intake manifold it then it tells the engine
how much air is in there. All right, so let's take this
thing off and talk about it. Just held on by two 10 millimeter
little boys right here. Math. Okay, so now we've gotta take
out the lower part of the box. So to do that, the first thing
I'm gonna do is loosen up the snorkel over here and then
it looks like three twelves nuts and bolts holding on
the lower part of the box. So this is our cruise control set up here and this is gonna need relocated for the kit we're putting on today. All right, so why do we
upgrade our intake system? Well, in theory it will allow
for an increase in airflow in your engine, which means
that you can make more power and since your engine isn't
gonna be working as hard to suck air in, you can also
gain a little fuel economy. And the filters that
aftermarket intakes tend to use usually tend to last a lot longer because they can be cleaned and reused. They also tend to look
nicer than the stock intake, and they most definitely
sound mad better, yo! Now that all sounds great, right? So why might you not
wanna upgrade your intake? Well, for one, if your engine is stock, your stock intake is probably not really much of a restriction. They're pretty well designed
for flow these days, especially because that's
linked to fuel economy, but it's also important to
know that adding an intake might also make it so
your car won't pass smog, which is a big deal in some
places like California. And if you have a newer car
that still has a warranty, you might void that sucker too. So you've gotta think about that. Okay, so you're convinced
you wanna upgrade. There are a couple of different
types that you can go with each with some pros and cons. The two primary designations
are a cold air intake and a short ram intake. So let's take a look at
the one that we bought and talk about it. The company that makes this
piece is called Racing Beat. They make all sorts of
parts for different Mazdas, including the Miata and they've got a pretty good reputation. So I bought their little intake guy. So this thing is short
with one nice smooth bend for as little restriction as
possible while still trying to place the filter in the
best location available in the Miata's engine bay. In our Miata currently, we just need to get it
away from where it is. You can see that where
the Miata puts its filter is right on top of the exhaust header. That means there's a lot of heat there and hot air means less oxygen,
which means less power, which is obviously bad. So the Racing Beat piece
just turns the filter around, which is much better with a lot less heat, a lot more oxygen and more power. This thing will make an
additional six wheel horsepower, which is a lot relatively speaking. When you consider that
the the Miata only makes like a hundred horsepower. That's about 6% of what the car makes, which is actually a
pretty good improvement. And it also replaces the old paper filter with this fancy K&N
oiled cotton cone filter, which should suck pretty
good and sound pretty nice. And these things last pretty much forever because you can clean 'em and reuse 'em. Just listen to the difference. (car engine revs) So this thing is actually
kind of an interesting little intake 'cause it's again, not really a cold air or a short ram. Though short ram intake is what it says. It's short. A short ram is just trying
to remove as much restriction as possible to let the engine gulp in more air into the throttle body. But what if you want less
heat and more power, baby? Well, you can go cold air intake, boy. they're designed to totally
relocate the air filter with some longer, more
intricate aluminum piping and they'll put the filter as
far away from heat as possible like in the fender well or
behind the front bumper. With the filter being
relocated to these areas, they become more prone to
getting caked up with dirt and picking up road debris. Like if you drive through
a really deep puddle or a kitty pool, it's
possible to suck enough water up in your engine to hydrolock it. So to know what's out
there for your platform and what people like the best, you're gonna have to hit the old Google and check them forums. So there is a potential
downside to the pretty aluminum intake pipes
we've been talking about. You might actually lose a
little bit of throttle response or even a little bit of torque somewhere by replacing your factory pipes. You see this chamber over here, this little chamber of secrets, that's what's called a
Helmholtz resonance chamber, and a lot of factory intakes have this in some form or another. It's pretty interesting. What it does is it kinda
acts like a shock absorber, cushioning all the airwaves in the intake and smoothing out flow, which is good. It can also, if it's tuned
correctly to the engine, it can act a little bit like a spring and propel air into the combustion chamber in just the right time to make more power. It also cancels out a little bit of noise, which is not very awesome,
but it is very smart. And for two of those reasons
we're gonna let it stay. That's why the Racing Beat
piece only goes on to the end and makes power. All right, we've got
some stuff taken apart. Anytime that's the case,
it's not a bad idea to do a little cleaning
while you're in there. All right, we need to remove
our cruise control actuator, which looks like two more little bolts. So we're just pulling off the
cruise control actuator here 'cause we need to relocate
it for our new intake. So these filters, these K&N filters are
cotton oiled filters. So it comes with this
little spray can of oil and we're just gonna finally
mist the oil onto the filter on the outside evenly. And that's it. And we'll wipe the excess
off the rubber parts and that's ready to install. Yeah. So we can snug up our hose
clamp over here at the bench. This is a bracket that comes
with the Racing Beat intake, which is the method for holding our mass airflow sensor in place. So that's about how it's gonna sit. So we've got this upper support that goes down to the frame rail here. We'll reuse one of our original
bolts to hold it in place. And then this support goes to
our our suspension hardware and we'll just keep it nice in place. So let's button it up. Is it tightened up down here? All right, that's it. An intake is installed. Let's fire it up, see how it sounds and see if we can feel a difference. You ready? - [Man] Yeah. (car engine revs) - Woo! That sounds so much better. You can hear it suckin' air in. I love a good induction sound. And now this has one. (car engine revs) Oh, yeah that underload going down the road is gonna sound so good. Let's go. All right, so obviously it's not like my expectations are super high. At best, this thing is
adding six horsepower, which, you know, isn't a lot. But this is a small car,
it doesn't weigh a lot. So six horsepowers should
be a bit of a change. Hopefully we can feel it. (car engine revs) (car engine revs) Sounds awesome. This thing finally makes
a little bit of noise. I think it pulls a little
bit harder at the top end. Well, it sounds great and it feels great. It's not crazy. Don't expect too much from just an intake, especially on a stock engine. But I'm telling you the
sound is worth it alone. Come back tomorrow and
check an episode Up To Speed with my boy James. And then come back the day after that, and the day after that,
and the day after that. You know why? 'Cause we're releasing
content every single day. That's right, baby! Donut every day. Make sure you're subscribed and
click that notification bell so you know what's coming. Follow me on Instagram
@Zackjobe to see more of what's going on in the
day to day with the Miata and follow Donut on Instagram @DonutMedia. We'll see you guys next week.
