What is the best intake? Why? Or is it all on opinion and most after market intakes are the same?

 

They are all basically the same from a performance standpoint. The only difference is in the materials used to construct the unit. Some use plastic, some use carbon fiber, some use chrome plated steel or aluminum, and others use stainless steel. All of the manufacturers claim gains of 15 to 20 HP, which you can believe if you want to. Most of the units help to dress up the engine compartment and provide better airflow than the stock air-box and filter but have similar flow to the stock air-box with a K&N filter added. All the intakes including stock air-box with a K&N filter are capable of flowing significantly higher CFM than the 480 CFM maximum the 4.2 uses at full throttle and red-line. The surplus flow is never utilized on a naturally aspirated motor. One point to keep in mind with aftermarket intakes is that you loose around 2.5 HP for every 10 degrees of rise in the temperature of the incoming air. Sucking air from the engine compartment on a HOT day in slow moving traffic costs you lots of HP. This is why the stock configurations draw cooler ambient air from the fender or grill area rather than directly from the engine compartment. A few of the intakes suck air from the stock fender intake point rather than the engine bay. These units probably perform better than the others. I have a stainless steel AF-1. The unit looks great, sounds great, and will never rust – but it did not make any performance improvements over the stock air-box and K&N that it replaced.

 

Refer to the top of the page on the sticky that says power recommendations. There are several intakes listed for our trucks. I have the MAC, and I like it a lot.