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The K&N Typhoon air intake is a high quality part. It not only replaces the stock air intake but also the upper charge tube. The upper charge tube is pretty restrictive stock and necks down to a small size early in its run. The K&N tubing is mandrel bent aluminum and powder coated a red wrinkle finish that matches the red of the stock engine cover nicely.
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| Naji suffered two cuts and a second degree burn because he didn't want to wait for the car to cool off. The Evo X is a bit harder to work on than previous Evos due to there being less room towards the rear of the engine around the turbo. Glued on stock connectors didn't help either. |
The couplers are made of a high quality reinforced silicone and the kit comes with all of the clamps. The kit has a heat shield that uses the stock cold air snorkel to keep cool air flowing over the open element K&N oiled gauze filter. We at first thought that the filter's end cap was some cheesy but pretty realistic looking fake carbon but were really pleasantly surprised to find upon closer inspection that it was real dry carbon!
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| Almost there! |
Because of the Evo X’s rear mounted turbo, this intake is somewhat difficult to install due to the long reach and tight areas we had to work with. We can usually bang out an intake install within half an hour or less but this intake probably took an hour to install. It was pretty hard to tighten the clamps around the throttle body, especially with our bad middle aged backs. The intake is not really that complicated but a limber 20 year old could probably knock it out a lot quicker.
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| At first we thought the filter end cap was cheesy fake carbon but closer inspection revealed that it was real dry carbon, a cool touch! |
After installing, we first took the car on a long drive to set the long term fuel trim to observe what would happen over time with the K&N intake. We were pleased to see that our long term trim only changed from 6.5% to 7.4%, hardly anything and a sign of a well designed and thoroughly tested intake. Naji was impressed as he reported to us that only a few intakes for the Exo X on the market don’t affect the long term trims. They usually make a big change causing a long term loss of power and check engine lights. Naji noted that this was one of the best production intakes that he has seen.
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| The supplied heat shield uses the stock cold air scoop to blow cold fresh air on the filter as the car is moving. We monitored intake air temps and found the heat shield to be pretty effective with the intake temps only going above stock during extended heat soak. As soon as the car started to move, the temps would quickly drop. |
