Cold Air Intake Question
 

I have an 05 Expedition 5.4V8 4x4. I was thinking about adding a Volant intake system. Can anyone tell me how it will effect my MPG, horsepower and torque? How loud or quiet will it be? I'm new to this forum. Hope these aren't dumb questions. I am also considering a cat back exhaust and maybe even getting the chip tuned. The goal is better gas mileage and performance without making it too loud.

The CAI kit itself won't add much performance gains but will make for a louder intake sound similar to the old 4-barrel carburetor. Add a good tuner and the two mod's will make a noticeable difference. Add the cat-back kit and you pick up a little improvement with a significant difference in exhaust tone. The one mod that will make the biggest difference is the tuner. I recommend the SCT X3 or Livewire from 5 Star Tuning. Here's the link:

5 Star Tuning | Custom Dynomemeter Chassis Tuning Products and Services

Welcome to FTE! 8D

Thanks! I'll look into it.

What are you going to do with the truck? My dad has an 06 Expedition and he put a K&N FIPK 77 series. We tow a 6000lb snowmobile trailer and it helps bigtime getting up to speed and keeping it from shifting out of overdrive if you hit a hill. Also these trucks have a pretty big stock exhaust piping, it's not really necessary. Save the $300 and if you want better exhaust performance get headers, prefferably stainless or chrome, ceramic ones tend to crack easily.

Oh yea hypertech programmers add torque by producing harder shifts for towing, can change the rev limiter for maximum hp, and it will reprogram your speedometer if you have different size tires, check out their website for more info I'm getting one for my F-150 with a 5.4 if you haven't gotten anything yet I'll let you know if it's really worth it. Btw it's just a programmer not a chip so you can always return the changes back to stock or adjust it at any point if you want to.

I installed the Volant CAI
 

To answer your question, I drive clients around, do family stuff (kid and dogs) and sometimes long road trips. To date I have not done any towing. My interest in modifications was really to see if there was something I could do to get better gas mileage. It had to be a change that wouldn't be too loud because the truck is used for carting clients around. I understand all the stuff about proper driving habits and keeping my tires inflated. What I couldn't find anywhere including here was someone telling me - I did x and here are the results. So, I'm going to try to share what I found in case anyone else out there is looking for some detailed results. I installed the Volant CAI and ran through 3 or 4 tankfulls of gas. We did reset the computer when it was installed to start the learning process over again. The result is a truck that seems to be more responsive and have a little more power. Volant claims a 16 horsepower and 18 ft. lbs. of torque gain. After driving the truck, I believe it! My average gas mileage has gone from 13.4 to 14.1 MPG. I have not been able to take any road trips lately. All my driving has been mixed, city and highway. So, I can't comment on how the highway mileage has been affected. I suspect there will be more of a MPG improvement on the highway. I say this just because of how the truck drives. The Volant system puts the airfilter in a sealed box. There is very little difference in how loud the truck is unless you get on the gas. Even then, the sound is not that loud. This change does not in any way limit my ability to put clients in my truck and head up the highway at 70 MPH. My truck is just a little more fun to drive and gets a little better gas mileage. This is a change I wish I had made when the truck was brand new. My next step will be a Gibson cat back exhast. My Ford mechanic tells me that the mufler on this truck is the single biggest problem in the exhaust. The Gibson system includes a mufler and also claims to be very quiet. I'll post another note a few tankfulls of gas after that change has been made.

If you do an online search for “air filter test” there is a lot of very good information. IMHO, the CAI units are NOT WORTH THE $$! Unless you are talking about a system that was specifically designed for a specific application there are very little hp/tq gains actually achieved in a street use vehicle and there are very few docs that these mfg’s can produce that actually show an increase in hp/tq in the power-band range of a relatively stock street vehicle.

I would avoid oil impregnated filters. While they have their purpose in off-road applications, Ford/GM/Dodge all have “watch-out” bulletins where the oil has contaminated intake sensors. - they even have a training video for the tech's on this (flatratetech.com) .

If you look at the flow data, WIX HP filters flow 98+% of K&N and have a much smoother flow post filter plus excellent filtering, for a fraction of the price! The OE’s have an excellent air intake system the only issue that really exists is the plastic intake tube with it’s noise canceling design- that does reduce the intake efficiency a little but makes it very quiet!. You can use a WIX OEM HP replacement filter in the OEM plastic manifold box and either remove the plastic tube and replace it with a piece of pipe/hose, etc or remove the tube completely and replace the tube by building an air ram type intake into the air box manifold (where the pipe use to attach)- make sure ti terminates above the fan shroud to avoid water intake or fan induced pulsations