Making some modifications..

Well I recently acquired something hard to find and decided to make some upgrades.. you'll see at the end what it is ha.

First though was to cut the annoying restrictive piece off of the bottom side of the intake bowl..




Won't be needing this anymore..


Soaking a giant k&n filter that came with something as part of a kit...



And if you haven't guessed it..

I found me a banks power pack lid. In the background I have also been working on removing the entire factory exhaust from y pipe back. 3" straight pipe [just because my buddy had some, I know it's 2.5 and good enough] back to a "fake" hollow stainless steel muffler for pa inspections and in case I get pulled over- to a side exit in front of the back tires. [Can't find a picture of it on my phone right now that shows anything but the tip, will get a picture soon].

Now on the to do list is how to feed that hole for the intake. I thought about the hypermax cold air intake in the cowl but I don't wanna weaken the firewall. I think I'm gonna put a pipe right up in the front somehow by the side of the radiator like this guy did for a ram air effect.

Cool. Since it's an N/A the more air you can get the better.

I wonder what banks advertised for a power gain with that setup.

Everything I've found googling this thing said it was advertised as roughly 15hp gain. That wasn't just with the lid with its weird deep inside cone and the 5" opening over the whole intake screen. It also had some different exhaust which most people said was 3" manifold back, but what I've done was pretty close to that with my system and mine is way shorter with the side exit and no muffler so I think I'm close but I really want to finish my cold air intake part before I post my results but I can already say after one dual tank fill up with it and driving it a lot since, there is already a difference.

You could not gove me a k&n air filter. They are garbage!

Pretty good garbage as I've been running them (and other brands like them) for years.

(No I didn't have one in my past civic which engine just blew up lol.That car had a replaced odo when I bought it with who knows how many miles.It wasn't worth the cost of a K&N lol)

After dusting a turbo, will never run k&n again. Thing was fresh outa the box pre oiled. Removed after 10k to do return lines and entire intake side of turbo was coated in oily dust. Cleaned everything up, installed an aem dry filter. Never had an issue since

You can also run a giant stp filter [or any brand] I'll get the part number I think it was 3549.

Brian, make sure you have a grommet under the bolt on the banks lid. If your cowl seal is not good, it will pool water. My dually had the complete banks set up when I bought it. The seal was bad, but the grommet was good. I had 2" of water in the hole. My truck had a magna flow exhaust on it. Gave the lid to a member in York (John) when I went turbo.

My current truck had the banks kit but in the motor swap, lost the lid. I got a lid from laserjock when I got the new cowl seal so it will be going on here shortly. I ran and will run the paper filters in it, not the K&N.

Same experience with K&N here.

I did too. NEVER run K&N filters.

they are designed for racing, not on road everyday.

Given the mixed reviews of the k&n filter and the fact that it was taking forever to clean, I'm just gonna show you guys what I had came up with instead and I'll just keep the filter this way.

First of all the tech article we have on doing this http://www.oilburners.net/threads/banks-powerpack-install-w-pics-na-7-3l.49843/ mentions the size difference between the factory filter and the stp filter that is recommended. Since I had the k&n filter banks used with mine I compared them, and there is a height difference. The stp filter i used is 1/4 shorter then the k&n filter that was meant for the power pack, so I bought window molding and put it 3m tape side down on top of the filter so it stays in place.



Fits like a glove and you can feel the lid hit the mesh on the filter as you tighten it down.

Also I had a new cowl seal fyi.

Next was 4" dryer vent tube up to the side of the radiator into a 3" reducer so I could wedge the pipe in there without any trimming.



I can honestly say though redneck hack looking to some extent this works and makes legit improvements.



I have consistently been getting between 17-17.5 mpg and fill both tanks until they are full at the filler neck every single time so I have a good basis point for my first test of all of this. Between the ram air by the radiator, the power pack lid, and chopping the entire factory exhaust off and using 3" pipe and using my hollow fake muffler side exited in front of the back tire, I got 18.9 mpg.

Even if that was off by .5 on the high side somehow of the variance I sometimes see I'm my mileage, that's still a full 1mpg better.

Also there's no real flat roads near me in pa, but my egts going up hog back hill [miserable steep hill about 2 miles long] my egts before all of this would be 1050-1100 going up it at wot in 5th gear at about 60.

Now, I can't hold the throttle at wot because I will keep accelerating [slowly] but I got up to 70 today. Egts were the same by the time I got to 70 and backed off as they used to be at 60.

I'm very pleased with this. I also zip tied the drier hose so it can't run up against my power steering pump and there is a gap between the rubber part of the intake system sitting in the grill and the metal pipe so rain water can fall out or drain back but it's such an uphill climb I'm not worried about it.

I've seen this done with the power pack before. FYI, next time you replace the filter, most parts stores also have some universal foam weather stripping with adhesive on one side that works as well.

Yesterday night we went to opening night at the drive in movies. Haven't been on that road for months, and there's a long flat spot I can maintain 65-70. My egts on here before I did any of this used to run 500-550, yesterday they were 400. Even a tick below 400. Really does feel like a different truck.

I also have the electric fuel pump, not sure how much that's contributing to any of my egt changes vs none of this, but all of these are super simple easy upgrades you can make for barely any money [except maybe finding the power pack lid but who knows how much if anything specifically it does].