i just picked up and excellent condition 99 civic lx and i want to put some intake on it. I am new to cars... but i have been around the motorcycle streetbike world a lot. I have a few questions about sri vs cai.
I can't decide if i should get cai because i heard it's not good to drive around in the rain. and i heard short ram gets the air to the engine quicker and that makes me wonder if short ram would be better off the line than cold air. I was wondering if anyone know performance wise how much better cold air is compare to short ram.
any info would help out.

If anyone has any sugestions orany comments for my car i would love to hear them. especially about intake.

 

https://www.hondacivicforum.com/m_335102/tm.htm

also you wont hydrolock your engine (when you suck in water) with a CAI unless your filter is compltely submerged, which would take you driving through a small lake

 

okay, first off, welcome to the forums! Now that that's taken care of, remember that there is a search function here. Trust me, do a search and you'll find a wealth of information on this topic; it's been covered a few trillion times lol

Anyway, here it goes:

Short-Ram Intake: pulls air from, for the most part, the stock intake location. The throttle response is better than that of a cold-air intake, but the top-end power is slightly (very slightly) lower than that of it's cold-air counterpart. Generally, SRI's are about half the price of a CAI system. You don't need to worry about driving through puddles with a SRI.

Cold-Air Intake: pulls air from behind the front bumper. Since the air is not being pulled from the engine bay, theoretically it's pulling in colder air. Colder air means denser air, and that means that it's technically pulling in more air. However, it can be argued that since the intake piping travels through the engine bay, the intake tube acts as a heat sink (since it's metal and metal conducts heat), negating the cold-air effect. Gains over SRI's are minimal (not even close to noticeable), and prices are high. The risk of hydrolocking the engine (when you suck water into the engine) is present, but don't be fooled: the entire filter must be submerged to completely hydrolock the engine. To avoid this, just avoid water that comes up to or past your bumper.

Personally, I have a makeshift AEM SRI (generic/ebay intake tube with an AEM dry-flow filter) and I love the thing. The total cost was a little under $100, so I think it was well worth it. And just so you know, you're not going to actually feel a difference with an intake. But don't let that discourage you; there aren't many bolt-ons short of a turbo kit that you'll honestly and truly feel a difference with. Remember: every little bit of extra power helps.

 

i like CAI better then SRI. you;d be good with a hydroshield on it.

 

I have a v2 and like the next day after I installed it I washed my car and with my body kit, the filter is out in the open and you can see it by just looking at the front of my car. I hit the filter a lot with the hose (on accident but it got really wet) and I started the car and drove it while the filter was soaked. My engine didn't hydrolock so if that doesn't do it then driving anywhere besides a lake will not do it either. If you have the money to spend then get an aemv2, if not then get an ebay short ram with a good filter.

 

I'm not so sure I belive this. I have the V2 on my car and at a car wash(in no waywasthe filter sumbmerged) on a hot day I pull in and have the ac running low and about 4 min in my car starts to run really ruff. when I go to press the gas it died. So my car is dead its only half way through but i'm a little concerned so I go to turn my car on and drive out to look at it. As soon as I started it sounded like it was running under water and died a second later. I wait for thewash to finish and push my car out to look at it. I go to start it again and nothing happened. Open the trunk to get the tools out pull the CAI off at the TB and there is water in the TB and a wall of suds in the CAI pipe. Cleaned the water out with a cloth and pulled the plugs and dried them. Went to go start it and ran really rough and could not hold idle for about 4 or 5 minutes. Rans decent so I go to drive it but hesitates then starts to run normal. Untill I was at 4000 and punched it it sound like it was under water again so I pull over and ran it at 5500 for a minute and ran fine ever since. And I no longer half *** my wash jobs.

 

Get an SRI. The 99 LX engine (assuming you have the stock D16Y7 engine) is a relatively weak engine to work with, so you won't notice much or any difference between a CAI and SRI. So, you might as well go with the SRI witch is less than half the price of cold air systems. I have the AEM Short Ram and I love it, throttle response is much better, and it makes the car have, I want to say an aftermarket exhaust sound. Anyways, it sounds pretty mean...good luck!

 

Thanks for the warm welcome. yeah i have been on forums that if you don't search it and you ask a common question they will chew your head off.
so thanks for being really helpful guys. I probably should have searched next time i will. i just really wanted to get that out of the way.

so yeah guys i think that i am gonna get an SRI maybe an aem or what about a k and n. what do you guys think.

 

lol. you mean honda-tech?

. go with aem sri. you get a dryflow with it, so that saves you a lot of time and money cleaning it (which shouldn't be frequently anyways)

 

thanks guys