you lost me at "Honda"
Whether cold air intakes make a difference or not depends entirely on the vehicle. Many modern cars already have pretty efficient intakes and putting on some poorly thought out ricer part can make it worse. You have to look at your specific application and see if it'll actually work for you. You also don't want to build something that will get your engine hydrolocked if you drive through a puddle. A buddy of mine had a really nice cold air intake on his eclipse that drew air from a high pressure area on his lower bumper. Worked great until we had a really hard rain and he drove through a few inches of water
Atticus's point about the tires is spot on... I don't really mess with engine mods because there's so little to gain for your effort these days, but a lighter and smaller diameter wheel/tire combo can make a pretty noticeable difference to handling, braking, and acceleration. Shedding unsprung weight really wakes up low horsepower cars.
Just put a short ram intake with a box around it that keeps it somewhat isolated from the rest of the engine, but it's not down in the fender well (or bumper) like the CAI's I've seen. Still it gets fed with a scoop thingy that gets air from just under the front of the hood. I worry about water going through there and getting on the filter, and then getting sucked in. (the thing does make a huge suction sound, and I wouldn't be surprised if it sucked in any water that made it's way onto the filter itself...)
Do you know if that guy went threw a puddle or standing water or was it just spray getting on the filter from driving on wet roads?
I see guys running exposed short ram intakes on their bikes all the time. Hell some bikes even come stock that way. I wonder what happens in a down pour?
This has some metal around the filter, but it doesn't look like it would stop water from getting on the filter in a heavy rain. That's a $30K+ bike...
Good way to hydrolock your engine during a heavy rain in this area. I've even had one Mazda through the shop with a bumper-sourced CAI that spit a rod through the block when it sucked up water. Any gains from that would be minimal, and if you want MPG, hotter air should actually be the way to go (more throttle opening for the same power and amount of air = lower intake vacuum = less engine power used to suck air past the throttle).
Honestly, not much upstream of the throttle on an NA car is going to do dick for HP or MPG on a modern car. All people wind up doing is getting placebo from loud intakes (if it sounds more powerful, it is, right? Same thing with most cat-backs - you're going to find all the power at the cat and manifold), and substandard filters (screw you, K&N, your filters are garbage).
IMO, Kyle, if you want more power, it's going to be either forced induction or internal engine work with at least cam(s), maybe some port work (though most modern cars have awesome port designs), headers and cat delete and then having someone who knows what they're doing tune it to run right. For real gains, you'll probably wind up in the bottom end with stronger rods and better pistons to be able to spin everything faster.
Bolt-ons are pretty worthless for your Honda, it's the sad truth. You might spend a few hundred bucks and pick up 10 horses, but that's pretty optimistic, IMO.
You want to get a more fasterer car cheap? Gut it. Lose all the weight the car doesn't need - carpeting, headliner, start removing parts of doors, etc. Of course, it'll be a lot louder, a bit warmer (losing the AC would make a big difference, too!) and a lot less comfortable if you go that route.
