This is from another board. This guy was asking about a CAI and bypass valve. I told him what I thought. But this other guy came in and said it wasn't worth the money and that it was a waste of money to get the exhaust redone to b/c the factory one was big enough. WTS was he thinking I thought I would get some input from some of you.

Anyway heres the link. http://www.hyundaituner.com/cgi-bin/yabb/Y...&num=1003022014

 

For some reason I never had visited that website before, and there is a MOTHERLOAD of misinformation over there. I'm probably not going to be very popular for a while wink.gif

I answered your question on the forum over there, but suffice to say that if you're buying a header, you want bigger (2.5 is good) pipes. If you're just doing a cat-back, then bigger pipes are not necessary.

-Red-

 

A CAI is nothing more than three feet of tube and a sponge. Well, hell, if we're going to oversimplify like this, why bother doing ANY modifications to your car? It's nothing more than a big chunk of aluminum and a chair!

You just send him Random's way. The Random CAI dyno results removed any doubt from MY mind that there is room for improvement over the stock air intake setup. Hell, just taking off the stock intake feed and resonators will give you an EXACT illustration of just how much of a bottleneck the stock setup is.

The same thing goes for the stock exhaust setup. Car manufacturers have other priorities than performance performance performance. Sure, they want to make a zippy car that people will enjoy driving. BUT, they have to also make it conform to certain emissions and fuel consumption standards. The exhaust system is an easy place for the manufacturer to tone down the car, and up the fuel economy numbers for sake of performance. Multiple cats will also bring down emissions numbers, but once again, it is at the expense of performance.

This guy is probably operating under the mindset of "none of these upgrades give you more than five horsepower...they aren't worth it." It's a point, yes. But these upgrades have a ripple effect with future upgrades. Are you REALLY going to run your turbocharger through your stock air intake and flat-panel air filter? rolleyes.gif These improvements give you a few percent HP here and there...but in conjunction with other modifications, those percentages have a MUCH bigger impact! A 6% raise on minimum wage is almost pointless. But a 6% raise on a $120K salary = a nice little trip to Maui.

Wow. This turned into a nice little rant, didn't it? I guess I'll stop now. I hope I helped a little with all this. smile.gif