Hey guys, just bought my first vette. An 86 base model. Looking to start upgrading. Figured I'd start with a cold air intake. Any recomendations? All advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks

 

welcome....before you begin your vette adventure, do some searching regarding mods to your c4....lots of them out there, most do nothing but take your money....mods that do any good are expensive and will require a lot of wrench turning....your stock air cleaner works pretty well...buy the factory service manual.(fsm)..you can get them on e bay.....c4's are complex, i'd check out every system to make sure all is good before throwing money at it. modest mods would be mild cam 1.6 roller rockers, headers and exhaust...You can figure the cost of all that....otherwise, drop a mini ram in......things like the hyperchip, airfoil, etc, is crap.....enjoy

 

Exhaust is a good place to start. A good used LT1 system can be a thrifty choice. In 86 Corvettes head both aluminum and iron heads. The aluminum heads are alot better.

 

The only true CAI is the SLP unit, which I have, and which I bought used. Its not worth the price new.

I'd recommend starting with headers and exhaust.

 

Congrats on your "new" Vette, welcome to the Forum, enjoy and save the wave.
Is it an early or late '86? Early units had iron heads, whereas the later had Al heads.

The best, IMO, available air intake mod is to cut the air filter top away to remove flow restrictions and switch the filter to a K&N.

 

Makes sense I've never been a fan of chips anyways, they always seem to good to be true

 

Thanks everyone for all the quick responses! Ill definetily be purchasing the owners manual and checking things out. I'll be looking into the k and n filter and exhaust for sure. Super great tips!

 

It's an early 86 with iron heads

 

Off the shelf, they are worthless. IF you have your car tuned after you have done intakes and heads, that is a different story.

 

I don't know what an '86 looks like under the hood, but my stock '96 already has a cold air induction from the factory. If your induction reaches forward over the top of the radiator like mine does, then you already have one too. And, as far as a K&N element...why? The stock paper element is huge, so that it can both filter and pass enough clean air to the engine. A K&N element is, basically, an oily rag with a lot of holes in it. If it actually does pass more air (does it, really?), then it's also passing more dirt. If you truly don't care about the added dirt going into your engine, and you truly believe GM's engineers didn't correctly calculate the car's filter area requirements, then save yourself that K&N money and just leave out the filter altogether.

I made the very mistake you're proposing on an '88 Ford Turbo Coupe that I bought new. That car, too, had a factory cold air induction, but Ford couldn't possibly have supplied an adequate filter, so I dropped a K&N element into the stock filter box. Within a week, the car was running strangely...and I ended up having to buy a new MAF sensor because the original one had gotten contaminated by oil that had misted/leached out of the K&N and traveled down stream, coating the hot wire or whatever the sensor element in the MAF was. I installed the new MAF sensor, threw the K&N in the trash, reinstalled the "inadequate" stock paper element, and what do you know...the car ran great again. Expensive lesson, well and permanently learned.

 

No you don't. That area isn't "fed" cold air from anywhere other than incidental "leakage" from seams and what not. I did a bunch of measuring in another thread, on my '92 and it's not what *I* would call, "cold air". A true cold air intake segregates any/all underhood air from the outside-the-car, air that it's ingesting. To do that, it needs to have a molded tube that runs from the TB to a place that is completely outside the engine compartment...a place that it will only find ambient/outside air temps.

 

I will note that on the dyno, the K&N conical filter picked up a little over the air filter that was stock with the slits cut out. Without any filter, it did make a little more than the K&N. As to the engineers, I don't know if you realize it but they work for GM and not you. They never asked you want YOU wanted. They were controlled by the bean counters, greenie weenies, etc.

So how do you explain the idea that a great many MAF cars run with it and have no issues? Maybe it is over oiling? I honestly don't know but one swallow does not a spring make, as they say.