Hey how you all doing...

Well i've been bored all this time trying to look for a good CAI but ofcourse there is no such thing out there yet I.E. AEM intakes... so what if I take my Air box out and paint it with high heat engine enamel and get some heat reflecting tape and cover it with the tape... make it a little bit resistant to the car radiant heat that way keeping the air at outside temp instead of getting hot with the engine radiant heat? bah anyways sorry for my mispelling >.<

Does the air really get affected that much by engine heat? I mean isn't it going in(wherever that is) fast enough to not get heated up?

I've heard stories about people trying to put CAI in their cars and getting CEL about o2 sensors going wacko. idk. once from a friend with a mitsu eclipse and another time from a cabby driving a 300C(hemi!)

The power from a CAI is mostly from being a less restrictive air intake pathway, not from it being a heat barrier. If you've ever touched a CAI inside the engine compartment of a running engine, you will find it's very hot.

Creating a heat barrier will help but it's a better idea to modify the airbox to create a easier path for the air to enter.

The airbox is actually pretty heat resistant already, the type of plastic they use is quite a good insulator.

Nova is correct, a metal CAI gets VERY hot and should be either ceramic coated or wrapped with insulation, although that isn't very bling.

Have you emailed ingen/aem and the others to ask for an intake? If they don't know people want em, they won't make them. :)

Air can easily gain 10-40* F while travelling through a heated metal tube, especially a fairly long one like the Sonata needs for a true CAI.

I'm still going to try wrapping that air box with some HRT, but I saw somewhere some ram air intakes for the sonata... ! oh yea I got it form a link someone posted on the azera forum... anyways I bet if I had the measurement of the intake hole I could bolt any intake... >.< God im bored, I should really focus on buying a Studie Grill, Real Lip and logos instead of trying to make this a ricer lol >.< btw Studie has even an exhaust system for the Sonata... too bad I can't understand korean and google wont translate their website heh >.< :right:

LOL, adding performance parts to the car is less Ricey than adding cosmetic stuff.

The intake is quite large, depending on where you measure, between 3"-3.5" diameter... not too many prefab intakes in that size, most are meant for honda civics with their little 2-2.5" piping.

I'm all about modding a car for performance. With that said, there isn't much of a performance gain to be had from a Sonata. To get anything that you might notice, you will need to add CAI, Exhaust (full system), and a remap of the CPU to adjust for these changes. After spending all that money you might gain 5-10 hp. I just don't see the advantage. Now if you change the exhaust for a different sound then that's music to my ears. (pun intended)

I'm sure that people will disagree with me but that's life.

Oh yea... make it sound just like a 350z >.< :grin:

dcjwlee, that's the second time I've seen you you mention "CEL", what does that mean?

As for the CAI, as mentioned before, the reason for their existence is to be less restrictive, NOT to try to be cooler. Cooler is better for performance (but not fuel economy, by the way).

The ricer CAI's have a heat shield, because they are drawing air from inside the engine compartment.

The Hyundai doesn't draw from inside the engine compartment. It actually has a ram-air scoop at the front of the compartment, just under the hood lip.

I have a Scangauge II hooked up to my Sonata. It dispalys intake air temp in realtime. Once you're moving, the intake air temp is about the same as outside air temp.

Try this:

Go do a 0-60 and 1/4 mile run with the factory box.
Then do it without the air filter installed
Then do it with the factory airbox completely uninstalled (make sure you leave the MAF sensor in)

I can almost guarantee the only difference will be in your head, and the sounds you hear. The performance increase will be negligible (if any at all), and nothing you can read without special instrumentation.

07PLATINUM, I TOTALLY agree with you!

But, reality doesn't sell bolt on gadgets. Magazine ads claiming 10-15 HP do!

CEL = Check Engine Light


First, CAI stands for Cold Air Intake. A CAI positions the air filter outside the engine compartment to bring in cooler and more dense air. An intake that positions the filter inside the engine compartment is an SRI (Short Ram Intake). SRI's are the ones that sometimes have a heat shields to block engine heat but a well designed SRI will work just as good as a CAI without the fear of hydrolocking (sucking water into the engine).

A quality, well designed CAI or SRI does work and will show measurable increase in performance over the factory air box which is designed to be quiet.

This post has been edited by NovaResource: Aug 22 2007, 09:59 AM

The comments about 5-10 hp are amusing.

That may be all you see, but I think you could tune 10-20 hp from the sonata without doing any other mods.

When I dynoed mine it went hugely rich, rich enough to cost horses and use a LOT more fuel than nessecary.
It does it for safety of the engine, and I fully understand that changing this would scare the heck out of any hyundai engineer, but it is power lost and fuel wasted all the same.

Bolt ons are great because they really don't effect the engine that much, and aside from the cost, should not be any drawback.
Plus if I end up keeping the car until the warrantee expires, it is getting a turbocharger and a 6 speed transmission swap.
If I sell the car, I can be happy that I have not done any changes which are not reversible.

I pulled the rubber seal off the top of the scoop, removed the rubber piece from under the hood that crushes the scoop's seal and then matched a hole in the air box directly opposite of the existing one from scoop's intake pipe. It has increased performance, but I haven't done any Dyno tests or anything. Remember, I have a 4 cyl. so anything that can increase performance without costing me an arm or a leg is welcomed.
Back in the day, this is what we did to increase performance on cars and motorcycles, but we had to do plug readings and rejet carbs. With fuel injection, the computers have taken over adjusting the fuel mixture.

hmmm another thing... whats the size for the intake inlet of the Sonata? 2.5" 3"? :)

V6 is about 3.5" at the throttle body, iirc.

Think the piping averages 3-3.5" all the way through.

Thank you dogstar.

Don't buy anything based on my foggy memory, it's been a long time since I measured the intake back in early spring.

On ebay Bling lights sells a CAI for a 3.3 sonata its carbon fiber,I ordered one
but am not quite sure if its the thing to do.They cost $99.00+ shipping.It is the only place I could ever find that said it was for a sonata 3.3.I guess go look and you be the judge

seen it, won't comment about it, just post pictures when you install it. :)

Got a link or a picture of that CAI?