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buying cold air intake. opinions?

5K views 29 replies 17 participants last post by  SteedaBrandon 
#1 ·
hey all, im fairly new to the forum but would like your guys' intake on buying a intake, hehe.

ill be buying it here in a week or so, im looking to go with the steeda, http://www.steedafocus.com/parts/2012-focus-cold-air-intake.html

anyone have one of these? and if you have a diff one, why did you go with it?

thanks for the feedback.
 
#3 ·
Steeda's products are highly respected both here and on other Focus communities, same with FSWERKS. Use the search function and look around and you'll find a lot of info.
 
#28 ·
thanks for all the feedback guys, and the steeda people getting in on the topic aswell. ill be going with the steeda just going to place an order, someone mention'd steedabrandon for fast shipping? this is Canada included i hope :p




nicely done, looks very good.
 
#5 ·
The Steeda intake looks way more professionally done than the FSWerks one, plus Steeda is well known in the Ford tuning community. I have one on my car and it's fantastic, work the engine up a bit too. Just be prepared for the car to be quite a bit louder than stock.
 
#6 ·
What's your reasoning behind that? Just curious, since FocusSport/FSWERKS has been providing tuning bits for the Focus for years and is one of the few companies to work mostly for our cars.
 
#9 ·
Just for reference...none of the linked intakes are "Cold Air Intakes". Not sure why people have it in their mind to call them this, but it's starting to become more a general term for "intake" rather than what it actually means.

The performance gains of changing an intake without actually putting in a cold air intake are minimal. You might feel it is different (and it'll sound different), but the gains are minimal, at best. You might gain 15bhp in the winter, but in the summer you very well might be losing 10+bhp on the warm days. That's the difference between changing an intake to something like this and actually installing a cold air intake -- the CAI won't ever *lose* hp.
 
#10 ·
The performance gains of changing an intake without actually putting in a cold air intake are minimal. You might feel it is different (and it'll sound different), but the gains are minimal, at best. You might gain 15bhp in the winter, but in the summer you very well might be losing 10+bhp on the warm days. That's the difference between changing an intake to something like this and actually installing a cold air intake -- the CAI won't ever *lose* hp.
The only time heat would be a factor for intakes that have decent heat shields is heat-soak from being stopped at idle for an extended period. I have intake temp data for my car (with K&N Typhoon) that shows that it takes several minutes at a full stop to reach intake temperatures above that of the stock intake at temps up to 95 degrees ambient. The negative effect of heat soak is negated quickly as the vehicle is back in motion--even at slow speeds. Heat soak from idling is the only situation where a well-shielded (non-CAI) intake would *lose* hp. Or at least, that is the case for the K&N--I can't speak for the Steeda. I would imagine that the Steeda intake would fair just as well, as it utilizes the stock cool air ducts in a similar manner to the K&N.
 
#15 ·
sure... i can't justify paying $300 dollars for an intake that is (in my opinion) no better than fswerks which is $180... furthermore steeda advertises it as a cold air intake, which it is not (it simply utilizes the stock ram intake system)... so a company that charges nearly double what it's competitor charges for a product that is (again, in my opinion) no better and calls it something that it is not... that doesn't bode well with me. on top of all that, fswerks uses itg filters which i am a huge fan of and have had great success with as long as i've run them

here are both websites so you can compare for yourself... i find the dyno numbers interesting considering the price difference in products (yes steeda's torque numbers are higher, but that's an extra $120 for 1.6 ft-lbs more torque)

http://www.fswerks.com/fswerks_coolflo_air_intake.htm

http://www.steedafocus.com/parts/2012-focus-cold-air-intake.html

aside from all of that... i would go with a (true) cold air intake over a short ram given the option (which is why i stated that even if you gave it to me for free i wouldn't run it...)
 
#17 ·
Lol, I love mine, like I said. I wouIdn't read into the loss of HP comments too much, I never noticed anything when it was 95 here this summer. and the $300 estimate was way off, I got mine for 230 shipped. Honestly, go with what you like better. I will say the Steeda sounds awesome, gives a nice grunt to the car. Its definitely a solid product!
 
#20 ·
Like most things in life ... you can always fine a product or service cheaper ... but that doesn't mean they are all made the same way... welcome to Capitalism.

Well I can't speak for fswerks, I can speak to Steeda and what all goes into our products.

We are an American company that engineers, designs, and manufactures all of our Steeda parts right here in the USA. We work hand in hand with Ford engineers through our Technology Transfer Program to ensure that we have the most up to date data when creating our products. We also are an ISO 9001-2008 certified company ... in short, this certification holds us to highest quality standards. What does this mean for you? It means that you are going to get a high quality part that is intended to work the way it was intended to work.

There is a lot more that goes in to our products then just this, but I just wanted to make sure you are aware of our commitment to creating high quality parts.

This is the Steeda difference.

Best Regards,

TJ
 
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