 I'm Emmy here again and welcome to another episode of Cobb U. In our first episode, we began with an overview of how your car works, by quickly going over the individual systems needed to make it work. So now let's dive deeper into each of those systems, beginning with the intake. An upgraded air intake is one of the first modifications on many enthusiast lists as soon as they get their car. There are a few reasons for this. Easy installation, even if you're not a master technician, you can follow along with our detailed instructions to properly install your intake system in no time and with minimal tools. Performance. Sometimes this gets blown out of proportion. Gain up to 45 horsepower, 92 foot-bounds of torque, no tuning required. Good luck with that. Exaggeration aside, some cars respond better to modified intakes than others. And in most cases, you should see some power gains. Last, but certainly not least, sound. An upgraded intake not only looks better than the stock one, but sounds better too. And personally, there's nothing sexier than hearing the sound of a turbo spool up. When we talk about an upgraded intake, it could be something as simple as a freer flowing drop-in filter. Or it's a complete metamorphosis to accommodate an upgraded turbo. What it isn't is something that looks like it was sourced from your local home improvement store. So let's talk about all the components of an intakes. We have a better idea of what we're working with. For this demonstration, we're going to use components from a Subaru WRX STI. So your setup might look different. Here we have a stock Subaru intake and air box with original filter. An upgraded drop-in panel filter that works with the stock air box and the Cobb SF intake and air box for the same vehicle. Taking a closer look at the stock intake, there's this snorkel here. And overall, this thing is heavy. It's bulky. It's the job done, but there's definitely room for improvement. Let's pop open the air box and take a look at the filter element. Swapping out your stock filter is going to be the first and easiest upgrade you can make because a drop-in high flow filter allows more air to pass through than the stock one without replacing any other parts. You just drop it in, retune the ECU if needed, and you're good to go. It's a great upgrade for someone who wants to keep their stock air box but wants something a step above stock. When you're ready to kick it up a few notches, you can replace the entire intake and air box. You may have noticed that some things have stayed similar while others have changed. You can see we still have a box to shield our intake from the heat of the engine bay, but the panel filter has been upgraded to a high flow cone filter. The filter is then connected to a MAF sensor housing. And finally, there's a silicone post MAF hose, which is much smoother internally than the stock plastic part. This will make for less turbulent airflow. Taking a step back, not only can we see that we've reduced quite a bit of weight and bulkiness from just this one component, but it looks a lot better too. Now that we know how an upgraded air intake goes together, how does it all work? First, air enters through the filter and into the MAF housing to be read by the MAF sensor. The MAF housing is designed to control airflow with these straighteners as it enters the intake and passes through a sensor that sits right here. We want to control airflow as much as possible so that the sensor gets the most accurate and consistent readings. And since we've mentioned MAF a few times now, it's the perfect time to explain that MAF stands for Mass Air Flow. Simply put, this sensor measures the amount of air flowing past it as well as the temperature in order to adapt to various climates. This sensor and its location are very important because the reading it provides to the ECU dictates several vital functions that have a direct impact on the performance of the engine. Things like the amount of fuel needed for complete combustion, load calculation, ignition timing, and other key factors. That's why this just isn't going to cut it. Finishing up our intake, once the air is measured by the MAF sensor, it makes its way through the post MAF hose and continues on its journey to the turbo inlet hose and then the turbo, which we'll cover in our next video. Lastly, when doing this type of part install, you will generally use these kinds of tools. Allen wrenches or hex sockets, ratchets and sockets, opened end wrenches, screwdrivers, dykes for cutting, and silicone spray. And now it's time for the pro tip of the day. Let's talk filter maintenance. If your filter's all gunked up, your car can't breathe deeply. And as a result, you're going to get a little loss in performance. So you're going to want to routinely clean and re-oil it. Now, your mileage interval is going to depend on how dusty it is where you're located. But we typically recommend that you do this every 10 to 15,000 miles. To clean your filter, first make sure you knock loose any debris that may have accumulated since the last time you cleaned it. Next, douse the filter in our cleaning solution, spraying from the outside in, and let it set for about 20 minutes. Once you've done that, rinse the filter with water from the inside out, and then let it air dry. An important note, do not use forced heat or air to speed up the drying process. Doing that can damage it. Just take it outside, let nature do its thing. Once that's dry, it's time to re-oil the filter. Take your air filter oil and lightly spray around the outside surface, about one spray every two square inches. Now, you want to be careful here to not apply too much oil to the filter. If you apply too much oil, some of it could get on the map sensor itself throwing off its readings, and can cause some significant problems. No, but seriously, don't over-oil your filter. It's the opposite of a haircut. You can always add a little more, but if you do too much, you're going to have to start all over. One round of oil will do the trick. One thing you might want to consider is having a backup filter on hand. That way, when your one filter gets dirty, you just pop in the other one, and sometime between the next 10 to 15,000 miles, you clean the dirty one. This way, your car has less downtime. It's the best tag team since the deadly boys. Before we finish, one last bit of important information to always keep in mind. As you're changing the size and shape of the intake housing and where sensors are being placed, you need to make sure that the ECU is being reflashed with the appropriate calibration to ensure that your engine will run safely. You need to always adjust for these changes. If you don't, best case scenario, your engine might run a little rough. Worst case scenario, it might run so lean that it turns your pistons into donuts. But don't worry, if you're having doubts about what calibration you should be running, check the map notes that are included in all of our off-the-shelf maps, or contact your local Cobb ProTuner. That's gonna do it for this episode. In our next video, we'll explore the turbo, its components, and how Boost is managed. Thanks for joining us, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can check out future episodes. I'm Emmy, your host for CobbU. Remember to check out CobbTuning.com for all your parts and tuning needs. Do you like the storage solutions featured in our studio? Then visit sonictoolsusa.com to get more detailed product information.