I have a 2008 4.6 Mustang GT and was wondering about cold air intakes.
Which one to use?
Ford has one that I belive requires a calibration kit as well?
K&N has one that I am told does not require any calibration kit.
Does the K&N void factory warranty.
I wonder what to do?

 

From my research, K & N does not void the warranty. There are several CAI kit's available. Can't name any other right now, brain cramp, but suffice it to say there are many and some do and some don't require a tune.

Personally, I just put in the WMS High Velocity CAI with 80mm TB. No tune was required. Installation took me 3 hours, cause I took my time and had a beer too!

Western Motorsports High Velocity Intake

Cost was about $500. I picked it up from the shop. I don't have any numbers to prove to you how it is performing but my mileage certainly has increased. Plus, it looks great!

 

Welcome aboard!

There was a thread on this very topic a little while ago.
Here's a link.

https://www.cmoc.ca/forums/t12025/

 

Thanks for the input folks.
So many CAI out there and so little info on them
I do appreciate your info
Tim in Winnipeg

 

I think Roush also makes one for the 3V that doesn't require a tune.

 

A custom tune is where all the magic happens. Without that a CAI is nothing more than a showpiece under the hood.

With that said the 2 best CAI available right now for 05+ Mustang GT are JLT and C&L. I'd loved to have supported WMS as they are local boys. But 5.0 Magazine tested all intakes including WMS and it came up short to the other two. I went with JLT and had the tube painted to match body color. It looks killer.

Brenspeed and Bamachips are highly regarded for there custom tunes. I opted for Bamachips. Tuned with SCTX3. No regrets.

 

Considering they didn't use the same car for all their tests I'd say that "test" isn't exactly a fair example. The wms makes just as much power as any other cai and also has the coldest IAT's.

That being said you are definently correct that most of the power comes from the tune not the intake. Personally I would suggest not bothering with a no tune required setup. You will eventually be wanting a tuner with tune anyway so you might as well get it all as a package to start with. It will give you the most bang for your buck and you will be able to use the tuner for future mod changes along with being able to adjust things yourself such as rev limiter, wheel size, rear gear ratio, air/fuel, timing, etc.

I wouldn't necessarily say JLT and c&l are the best, but they are the most popular along with the steeda cai. They are all great and if you can find a deal on a package with tuner/tune any of those three will be fantastic. I'd highly suggest going with sct tuner/tune, the reason being that 90% of tuner shops use sct software so it will allow you more avenues of available shops to get tunes from.

 

This has all been very helpful fellas.
The shops that I had spoken to didn't think that the tune was very important.
After seeing what you guys think I now know twhat to do-go with the tune kit.
Thanks again

 

Absolutely add a tune it wakes the vehicle right up and combats the poor throttle response and so on. I have a used JLT with an Xcal3 for sale for 350.00 if you are interested.

 

Go with the JLT can't go wrong for the money! you won't wipe the smile off for day's