I was gonna take the money from selling my camera on Ebay and put it towards a new camera but instead I did this.
I've always known that overall a CAI produces more power than a SRI but I also had worries about the chance of hydrolock. So I went with a simple short ram with a quality filter to replace my stock intake. I also did the throttle body bypass, put on a polished throttle body, added a heat shield too (which helped a bit) but the truth is my SRI was still sucking in warm underhood air which limited the potential.
Back in 2006 I found out about the K&N Apollo Cold Intake System and posted about it here at the club when I did. Ever since then I was very interested but the price and difficulty in getting them put it on the back burner. The idea of a CAI that could easily be transformed into an SRI (if need be) was very intriguing. And makes a ton of sense.
Well, I finally did get a K&N Apollo CIS and installed it. And I'm very impressed. Originally I planned to use the aluminum intake elbow from my SRI but it was too big. Instead I'm using the stock elbow (for now, I still may switch it out for a smaller aluminum elbow at some point). The install was very simple. From beginning to end less than a 1/2 hour DIY project. I know our member Toecutter installed his putting the cold air hose in the location where the stock resonator was. I took a somewhat different approach. My hose is routed more towards the front air dam of the car (sort of tucked between the fog light and air dam area). Sorry for the crappy cell phone pic:
Let's talk about performance. My SRI gave me somewhat better throttle response than stock, noticeable louder but awesome sound and a nice boost at wide open throttle. It also seemed that as underhood temps rose, power dropped off a bit. I also think that I might have lost a little low end punch. But that WOT sound was positively intoxicating.
On to my impressions with the K&N Apollo installed. There doesn't seem to be any real difference in throttle response compared to the OEM intake setup. The noise level at idle and anything below WOT is only slightly louder than stock. I almost hear my Borla exhaust more than the engine. At WOT though, it is definitely increased from stock but much more subdued than it was with my SRI. A lot of this probably has to do with the fact I'm using the stock elbow for now. As far as perceived power, this is where it gets interesting. There definitely seems to be a bit more low end oomph than with the SRI or stock setup. And at anything above 4,000 RPM it's downright smile inducing. Definitely more pull than with my SRI. The power seems very smooth.
Here's something else that shows me this thing is much better than an SRI... After I took the car out on about a 1 hour test drive, I parked in front of my house and opened the hood. The Apollo's flexible aluminum air hose, the filter casing, stock elbow and throttle body were all totally cold to the touch. With my SRI, the intake elbow was actually almost hot to the touch after driving.
Sounds good huh? Well it gets better and this will interest a bunch of EC members:
By a stroke of good luck I found Summit Racing online had the K&N RC-5052AB universal Apollo CIS kit. And it was in stock! It was $126 shipped and I got it in 2 days. Summit Racing is excellent.
Yes this thing is pricey for an intake and it's possible to rig up something similar yourself but I'm very happy with this product. K&N is quality.