Cold air intakes.

[Aloicious]

on a pre-96 a real cold air intake might help out some, but on a 96+ they don't do much, the stock vortec intake is already a cold air intake, so any difference you'd see would basically be from the filter itself. I used to own a volant on my '96, there was virtually no difference whatsoever, no power gain, no MPG gain, it was louder, but thats about it. not to mention the volant was built piss poor. the fit and finish was terrible, the "seal" it had for the fender wall was a tiny flap of foam weatherstripping, and the box couldn't even mount close enough to the fender to get a complete seal on it. the TB hat was an okay piece, but it was held on with some tiny washers that were barely larger than the holes that they were over, I had to buy some larger washers and cut a side of them off to get a decent mount to the TB. not to mention volant has horrible customer service. I had to replace a piece of the kit that got broken, called them up and asked, they said that would be fine but they required documentation that I purchased the whole kit, which I provided and they said it was good. they told me it would ship out soon and they'd call me when it does, and then the waiting began, days passed, and I heard nothing, after a couple weeks I called them back, no answer, no voicemail, sent a few e-mails, no answer no kickback message, I waited more, called more, and every time I got no answer, no response to e-mails, even letters, and to this day (it has been ~2+ years) I have not recieved nor heard anything from them.

I would never buy another mass produced CAI for my truck, which is okay because nowadays no produced pieces would work on my setup. right now I have the stock vortec airbox and have made the tubing from filter to the MAF and from the MAF to the whipple with ABS piping and silicone couplers.

 

[Greg]

good luck lol

no ****. i'd like to find one for under $150 that is guaranteed to free up some performance and mpgs

didn't read your post alocious. so i guess there isn't much us vortec guys can do.

 

[Aloicious]

no ****. i'd like to find one for under $150 that is guaranteed to free up some performance and mpgs

didn't read your post alocious. so i guess there isn't much us vortec guys can do.

there is tons we can do, but expecting to get much out of a produced CAI isn't one of them. our stock systems already seal up very well and provide cold air from the factory, even better than most of the production CAI's out there that I've seen (ex. poor or no sealing around the fenderwall inlet, aluminum or other metal piping which will introduce much more heatsoak than quality plastic pipe).

if you wanted to do something, you could get some piping and try to smooth out some of the transitions in the ducting (like where the corrugated flex pipe pieces are), and using a good quality pipe that will insulate better will help keep the air cold on its way to the engine, and perhaps a different TB hat or fabricate something there, that with a good new filter would provide better results than a purchased system, and cost WAY WAY less. but even with a super high quality built/bought setup, dont' expect too much, we're talking likely in the single digit hp gains, and MAYBE 1 mpg (unless the filter you're replacing is old and past its prime, in that case you might see more, but that would just be from getting a new filter on there.)