Cold Air Intake worth it or not?

[bimmerred535i]

I have an EAT chip in my car and wanted to know if a cold air intake made that much more power considering the stock intake has a snorkel and is getting cold air. (Battle between cold/fresh air vs. surface area/cfm)....Wanted to know other people's experiences especially people with EAT chip?

[Ross]

As you point out your car came with a "cold air intake", look at where most of the cone filter kits place the intake.
The general consensus is that they don't offer an improvement and the oil from the gauze filters fouls air meters. The extra induction noise fools some into thinking they are faster.

[BigKriss]

I had a custom made one removing the highbeam light - look at my old posts, with an eat chip also, but I didn't notice any difference when it was on there and chatting to mark d , he said it wouldn't make any difference also. I put the headlight back recently but the car is off the road for at least a few months now.

[Qube]

Nope... unless you like the increased sound from the engine bay.

[Kibokojoe]

I read a study that said cold air is better for performance. I personally like the air being drawn outside the engine compartment.

[BigKriss]

true, colder air is denser so there is more oxygen available, but the factory ecu would have to be tuned to take this mod into effect and I doubt it would make any noticable difference. well I didn't notice any differecce.


I read a study that said cold air is better for performance. I personally like the air being drawn outside the engine compartment.

[Ross]

I'm pretty sure all E34s measure air MASS. Older cars that meter volume would theoretically need retuning.

[bubba966]

I read a study that said cold air is better for performance. I personally like the air being drawn outside the engine compartment.

Yup. A general calculation for power increase estimates is that for every 10 degree F drop in air temp you get about a 1% increase in HP. Opposite would be true as well. For every 10F increase in air temp you loose about 1% HP.

I wouldn't mess with the air intake of the E34. It's already getting cool air from behind the headlight. And it's actually tuned as well to increase intake efficiency. Changing the factory air intake has proven to do nothing positive and frequently actually decreases performance due to either the air temps being higher in the aftermarket intake (because they don't do as good of a job collecting cool air instead of warm/hot engine compartment air) or the intake velocity being slower in the aftermarket air intake. And those cone filter cheapies you see on eBay list as "cold air intakes" have both the velocity & temp problems.

But they will make the engine noisier...