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.

my solution:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...bonnet-156986/

Speaking of which, I just got back from seeing Chris about the intake tube. I had asked a few months ago when I was getting front brakes from Rene (his dad) and he was out of them at the time. But he suggested that once he got them in, he would install since there is some tweaking and custom fitting that goes on. I finally had the chance to go by and watched him do the install--took about 1/2 hour. Here is the result. The main "customizing" was running the breather line (see arrow in photo showing line that was attached near the elbow of the original OEM intake tube). The breather intake fitting on the Mina tube is near the air filter. The actual breather location on the engine is at the front of the driver side cam cover so we could have removed the OEM tube and just run a new tube from the cam cover to the Mina fitting. But Chris suggested leaving the OEM tubing in case I wanted or needed to install the OEM intake so he connected a new piece of tube to the original one and ran that to the Mina fitting. Probably easier to look at the pics and you will see what I am talking about.

I can say that the car is definitely more responsive from a start. It always seemed that there was some slight lag while the air made its way up the accordion and around those noise abatement bongs and finally into the TB. With the Mina tube that lag is gone.

Plus the tube looks pretty decent. Seems like a decent little add-on.

Doug

Does the breather tube hit the block? Is that an issue?

Nothing is hitting anything with the new setup. The OEM setup included a plastic/rubber tube that runs from the front of the left cam cover back along the top of the engine and then into the fitting at the elbow of the OEM intake tube.

The Mina folks decided to put their fitting on the front of the metal tube a bit back from where the MAF gizmo is. Probably the simplest breather hookup would have been to totally remove the old rubber tube and run a new tube directly from the cam cover fitting across the front into the fitting on the Mina tube.

Chris said he would do that but thought that leaving the old rubber breather tube where it was would easily let me put back the OEM intake if I wanted. So he ran a new piece from that tube (where it used to plug into the OEM intake) around the rear and up the side to the Mina fitting. With a little creativity this probably could have been run at the underside of the Mina tube but the way it is now really doesn't cause any problems.

Car runs fine (a bit more responsive) and no codes are being thrown.

Doug

Just installed mine today. It is a pretty good upgrade. You can really hear the supercharger spool and the 30-50mph dead zone seems to have come alive a little.

Took me and a buddy an hour or so to install. I did not use the R-Performance sticker.

Can't boast added performance, sure does sound nice.
 

Although my XK8 is not blown, the combo of air intake as well as mina exhaust sure make a sweet sound when you step-in heavy . Rich