Anybody install one if these things on their car?

 

Yes, whole bunch of threads on this. General consensus is the LT1 makes no additional power and not much noticeable noise except for the vararam or K&N intakes with more exposed box designs. Most people just go with the BMS Attack Blue Filter.

 

decent mod to do, many to chose from.
i have the holley one for now, might go with rotofab down the road.

 

Got to give props to GM on the LT1 intake flow. CAI is 99% pretty, 1% get anything out of it AND you are allowed to spend 3 or 4 hundred dollars to accomplish that. If you are running FI, then CAI will get you some gains.

So, pretty, spend that money.

Elmer

 

I've looked into it. IMO, its a waste of a few hundred dollars. Videos on youtube that people actually lost HP after install lol.

 

Just keep your filter clean or change to some of the aftermarket filters. Don't waste money here.

 

the OEM intake is a cold air intake.

 

Thanks everybody

 

As stated, all show, no go. Minimal HP for $400-$750. Just replaced my paper filter with a K&N filter and did it myself. Save your $.

 

All I can say is anytime you change the intake system you need to measure the crankcase pressure before and after and make sure it stays where it was, below atmospheric at wide open throttle. Or else oil will push out from every seal and blow out of the pcv system. Simple

 

I couldn't imagine doing something to a naturally aspirated intake outside of physically plugging off the PCCV port that would result in positive crankcase pressure, much less necessitate actually measuring crankcase pressure before and after the change.

Could you elaborate on how such a scenario would reasonably come about?

 

My Pleasure. I will demonstrate and also show a video.


Imagine we remove the air filter. Now the intake tract is atmospheric pressure, lets call it 14.5psi.
The engine crankcase engine off is also 14.5psi.
When you start the engine, the engine crankcase is going to become 14.5psi atmospheric + blowby.
So it will always be higher than atmospheric pressure on the running engine unless we create vacuum somewhere to draw it out.
At idle and cruise this vacuum is supplied by intake manifold vacuum.
At wide open throttle Intake manifold has no vacuum. So the crankcase will be under pressure unless we provide some vacuum.
If the crankcase becomes under pressure there are many issues. Oil contamination due to pressure scalar. Oil contamination due to partial pressure of dissolved gas. Oil will leak from oil seals due to pressure scalar. Piston ring tension is lost and rings switching early at end of power stroke will increase blow-by even further. Ring flutter may occur when ring inertial forces balance crankcase pressure with tension forces at the end of power stroke. Oil contamination of ring pack due to crankcase pressure leads to light hydrocarbon chains leaving over time which causes stuck rings due to hard carbon deposits.

There is a slew of issues potentially we need to avoid using a simple system.
This simple system is called PCV which means
1. A pressure below atmospheric at all times in the crankcase to preserve ring function, prevent dissolution of blow-by gas, protect oil seals and organize crankcase gas flow vector velocity.
2. Sufficient Energy supplied to crankcase blow-by gasses in order to remove them from the crankcase before they can contaminate engine oil and create deposits which lead to failure.

So now we add the appropriate air filter. Air filters are rated CFM @ pressure drop. For example 500CFM @ 1.5" Hg is a typical rating. K&N for example rates their filters similar to this way. If you call K&N and get the right person on the phone you can order a specific CFM flow rate @ some pressure drop.

TO put this into perspective if your engine flow rate peak HP is approx 500CFM of volumetric flow rate, then you would order roughly a 500CFM @ 1.5" Hg filter. This way the engine HP peak results with a strong 1.5" Hg pressure drop on the crankcase. Over time filters get dirty they accumulate more pressure drop, it will become 2" Hg or 2.5" Hg if very dirty. This is how the OEM original paper air filters are designed. Please observe measurement over mileage for a random filter example



Next please see this pressure drop on the turbo inlet to show filter pressure applied to crankcase at some CFM Flow rate




Now you can see why all auto manufacturers provide OEM air filters which are slightly restrictive and generally become more restrictive as the engine is not maintained properly. The more mileage that accumulates without a proper filter change the more cleaning action is applied to the engine oil and crankcase system, the more the engine breaths from itself. If the owner is not changing the air filter they may not be changing the engine oil. It is a common sense engineering approach. Some of the filter pressure drop is driving the PCV system. Yes you can gain 2 perhaps 3 or 4% additional power by replacing the filter with a free flowing filter (or removing the filter all together) but this will disable the PCV system and allow crankcase pressure to rise causing all of the issues mentioned and more. This should help explain why breather systems and catch cans with breather holes that allow pressure to escape can add some additional couple percentage of power as well.


I promised a video. Here is my 240,000 miles LM7 with 600rwhp for 55,000 miles gasoline. The engine was free from a junkyard they thought it was trash.
The point of this build was to have both a reliable daily driver of course, but using a free engine to produce $$ engine power, and also show how the PCV system is more than adequate when using the truck engine, truck valve covers, with 2x factory output, for high mileage I have NO issues. The problem people have with this engine comes down to improper air filter and PCV valve setup, and lack of respect for crankcase pressure monitoring.

 

Seems like the OEM intake does a very good job when it comes to performance. If you want to spend a few hundred dollars, I would say there are better things to spend it on.