Manufacturers and Stock Cold Air Intake Systems  

Why your Accord does not deliver all of its potential horsepower. The manufacturer of your Accord or other vehicle usually decides to put noise reduction ahead of maximizing the power of your car. Honda probably thought that they can sell many more cars that are quiet than those that are more powerful.

There are a host of different ways the manufacturer can decrease the noise lever in a car. First is  they want to decrease the sound of the airflow coming into your engine. There are many ways they can do this, but usually it involves some type of restrictions in the intake path of the air before  entering the engine. Sometimes you will find air intake pipes that are too small for maximum flow, or a design that has baffles in the air intake flow. It could also have bends and kinks. All of these will reduce the  sound in the typical factory air intake system. All of them also rob you of potential power.

If you design a replacement air intake system you must design your systems to do the opposite. They must then determine how can they maximize the airflow in the intake system, while at the same time realizing that it may    increase the noise level. They know that some buyers would gladly trade a little increase in noise for  an intake system that increases the power of their car.

They must design an air intake system with as few restrictions as they can make. The new air intake system can be a little larger than the original air intake system or the same size. A larger size allows more airflow than a smaller one. Generally the new design has a longer air path which allows placing the intake inlet in a cooler area of the engine compartment. This combination of cold air and less restrictions with a new air intake design will help regain the horsepower that can be lost in a stock air intake system.

•  First they design the basics for their air intake system.

• Second they must test everything on a dynamometer to insure that power is being increased with the new system. They must also find out at what RPM this is power increase is happening. An air intake system can have power increases at one RPM while it will cause a loss at another. So a challenge to the designer is to increase the power for the most appropriate power range a user will need.

In general the typical driver would want an air intake system that increases the horsepower and torque at a lower to medium RPM range. This would give you faster acceleration rather than an increase in top speed. This is also a safety feature, as most power requirements are for such things as merging on to a freeway. A different air intake system design could deliver more power at higher RPMs. This would be for the owner who needs power at high speeds. This later application would require a special order, as most systems are not designed to do this.

Accord cold air intake