Cold Air Intake - Any suggestions?
 

After modifying my car's exhaust, I decided to look into the installation of the cold air intake kit. From researching the topic briefly, only Mina seems to have a "ready to install" product. Does anyone know of other alternatives? I have no problems going with Mina, but read somewhere on this forum that their product may ingest water. Does anyone have any experience with this? Your suggestions and comments are appreciated.

Our stock intake is already CAI. You can replace stock air filter with 'sport' K&N to get 2 HP :) Probably the best advantage of using it is more sporty sound. Disadvantages: our engines, SC and MAF like clean air from stock filter better than that from K&N.

Moreover you can rework intake pipe deleting silencers:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...-w-pics-58619/

Thanks for the info. Obviously 2HP on a 390HP car matters very little, if at all. However, if the change also improves the sound, then I am all for any improvement; even if it already sounds very good.
Any other suggestions?

The Mina intake looks nice, but is more of a hot air intake as it is open to the engine bay.

Probably the best you can do is remove the stock box and extend the intake tube into the front bumper where you can attach a cone filter. This does require cutting a hole in the inner fender though, so it is not for the feint of heart.

Not sure what kind of gains you will realize from that investment without changing more things though. But it does leave options open for other improvements: larger MAF, bigger intake tube, etc.

It looks as if it may be better to leave the air intake alone.

The factory intake is already cold air but it's very restrictive. You need to replace everything in front of the throttle body with 3.5" tubing and a well insulated cone filter. This would gain about 30 hp. Anything less than a full intake is not worthwhile.

SteveM, do you have any links to off the shelf products or is this all custom made stuff?

Custom made. You can make your own with silicone hose and aluminum tubing. I think there's a couple members that may sell something similar.

Something like these:

Next week I'm heading to a mechanic to fit an X-Pipe. I'll ask him if something can be fabricated to make it look presentable.

From all that I've seen and read, either keep the stock intake or drill through the wheel well as per Avos' suggestions for his SC kit, which I'll hopefully be installing soon... it's been sitting here too long! lol Someone here has gone a step further and routed air to this same location from the front grille, but I don't remember where that is.

Consensus is Mina and other 3rd party intake kits aren't worthwhile and if you want more, you need to cut and route through the wheel well.

Twin screw SC
 

Are you saying that you'll be installing the twin screw SC? If that's the case, doesn't AVOS already provide you with his own fabrication of the cold air intake?

SteveM, did you do this mod to your car and dynoed it before and after?

I'm sceptical about 30hp gains with this mod. Why? Because stock TB has 3" bore. So does it make sense to put 3.5" pipe connected with theoretically restrictive 3" TB?

Avos 'old' kit utilized stock TB and gave up to +180 HP, so is really stock TB restrictive? IMHO it is more than enough for up to 500+ engine HP.

I didn't do a before dyno. But I did before and after 1/4 mile runs and was .4 second quicker; which suggests 40 hp. I said 30 hp to be conservative. It's hard to believe that you can gain so much from an intake on a modern car but that just goes to show how restrictive the stock system is. I already had a free flowing exhaust so intake gains may be less with the stock exhaust. This was with the stock TB and MAF- which on the AJ26 looks terribly restrictive. You would think 3.5" tubing with the smaller TB and MAF would not flow smoothly, but it actually produces more power. It means 3" is too small.

Here is a thread with dyno runs and testing:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...results-74595/

You can make 500 hp on the stock TB but that doesn't mean it's not restrictive. You'll make more with a larger TB. The TB and intake is the same size on the naturally aspirated cars as well as the much more powerful supercharged models. It's not optimized for one or the other.

By boring out my stock TB, I reduced intake vacuum (restriction) from 130 mbar down to 40/45 mbar.

The kit does not include that. There is a bit of a DIY involved and the intake tube is left up to the end user how they want to do it.

XF cold air intake
 

Steve
Saw your reply above and that you're in NY. Just purchased a 2016 XF R-Sport and am interested in a cold air intake. Any thoughts


Thanks,
John S
914-282-2287

My experience has been with the older models. Not familiar with newer models like yours. Search in the XF forum where some members have done intake mods.

Remove your phone nmber from your sig unless you like trolls and scammers.

Oh- and forget massive HP gains from a cold air intake. The factory piece is already pretty good.

Thx
 

I was hoping to get a bit more growl with less restriction and better breathing - Thanks for the Troll warning

If you order the Mina intake tube be prepared to wait a while. Mine took nearly 6 weeks to get. And when it arrived the elbow at the throttle body is neon blue. Chris said he would remedy it but haven't seen it yet.