Im a new member here and I was looking to put a cold air intake on my 06 si. Im not sure if i should go w/ the CAI from AEM as is, or if I should get a by-pass for it? I know i might loose alittle bit of power if I put the by-pass valve on. Any suggestions?

 

You can't get a by pass valve for it as yo have a MAF on it where the bypass valve would go. Plus the bypass only truly works in deep deep water. The filter sits behind the front bumper and has the plastic undershield protecting it. I have the intake and have gone thru several thunderstroms w/o any problems you just need to watch out for deep puddles that is all.

 

ya if you are dumb enough to drive in a puddle that would completely sub-merged the filter........then you really don't deserve the privilege to intake oxygen let alone drive an Si

 

Allright...so let's say it's raining outside, you're on a highway cruising about 60 mph, and you come up to a low dip in the highway wherein cars are slowing down to go through it, because the puddle is riding up to about mid-upper tire level. There are no exits at this point so you can't exit, you can't simply stop on a highway or turn to go the other way. Would you pull over onto the side and wait for the water to evaporate? The reasonable answer would be no--you're driving somewhere for a reason and you shouldn't have to pull over for something so trivial.

The point of this is to illustrate that somtimes there are instances wherein the driver is put in a position with no choice in the matter. A car should be able to handle driving through moderate puddles. The location of the CAI although good for HP, is in a very inconvient place because of possible water ingestion/hydrolock. I personally would never have one without the bypass valve...and since we can't put one on for this model vehicle (yet) I'd say wait and AEM will figure something out.

 

they aren't going to figure something out it is how the intake was designed, they designed it to not use a bypass valve, if we didn't have two sensor reading air flow we would good but honda decided otherwise. so since we have a MAF sensor there is not much you can do about having no bypass valve it is just something you have to live with if your so oconcerned then don't by the intake

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vankuen &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Allright...so let's say it's raining outside, you're on a highway cruising about 60 mph, and you come up to a low dip in the highway wherein cars are slowing down to go through it, because the puddle is riding up to about mid-upper tire level. There are no exits at this point so you can't exit, you can't simply stop on a highway or turn to go the other way. Would you pull over onto the side and wait for the water to evaporate? .... </TD></TR></TABLE>

turn the car off and coast through that puddle!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vankuen &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">...the puddle is riding up to about mid-upper tire level. </TD></TR></TABLE>

If you're facing a "puddle" that is going to submerge the car to the middle or upper part of the wheel, um, you've got more problems then hydrolock

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vankuen &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">you shouldn't have to pull over for something so trivial.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Trivial? What kind of roads you got down there in San Antonio where you have to worry about unavoidable 2 foot deep "puddles" on the highway?

Honestly I think the amount of people that have had hydrolock from a CAI versus the number of people that own them is probably one in a million.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by uncleben &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
Trivial? What kind of roads you got down there in San Antonio where you have to worry about unavoidable 2 foot deep "puddles" on the highway? .</TD></TR></TABLE>

I've been driving for 10 years and never been even close to a situation like this.

 

no, but I had this happen to me when driving my GSR in heavy rain. The rain was steady and it had been raining for several hours. My car was lowered almost 2" at the time on short body Advance Design threaded shocks with GC coilover sleeves.

I drove for about 10-15min. through standing water on the highway with this heavy rain. The water was about 3/8" deep. I was in top gear doing about 55-60mph on brand new Azenis (can you guess where I was going in this heavy rain? hehe) when I noticed I started losing power and my engine felt like cutting in & out. This all happened very fast and I was like holy sh*t, this can't be happening to me. I immediately took my foot off the gas and shifted to neutral to keep the revs down but as I was doing that the engine stalled. I pulled over to the shoulder under an overpass and waited and preyed for an hour for the engine to start again and have no problems. In the meantime I went outside and pushed that little rubber "cover" (in) under the AEM CAI filter, and it dumped water on my hand filling my palm! I then jacked the car up and removed a couple of the plastic screws and pushed the plastic undercarriage liner away from the filter so I can check it out. Shook the filter a little and it was soaked. It dumped a couple of ounces of water on my hand! I kept shaking it for about 5min. until most of the water came out of it and it wasn't dripping much. Anyway I was lucky and after about 1hr I started it up because the heavy rain was down to a drizzle. I drove home and everything seemed to fine. That was 2yrs ago and the car still drives fine. I guess I was lucky I didn't go over a deep puddle and that the standing water was under 1/2 inch.

I never had any problems driving through heavy rain (not puddles) before when my car was only lowered 1" on GC coilovers with Koni yellows in the past. But I guess that all changed with a 2" drop. You just have to be very concious of standing water with a CAI. It doesn't have to be a puddle. The water still gets through the cracks of the plastic liner/cover that's supposed to protect the engine bay and distributor/wires - up higher. The CAI air filter is only about 1-2mm away from there and when driving through standing water for 15 miles like I was doing, it seemed to have a steady spray of water being sucked into the intake.