Video Review & Installation

Hey, guys. Adam here with americanmuscle.com and today, I'm gonna be installing, reviewing, and Dyno testing the JLT Performance Series 2 Cold Air Intake which is a great choice for any '11 to '14 Mustang GT owner or '12 to '13 Boss 302 owner. Now, if you've got the S197 with the 5-liter engine in it, you might be looking to ditch the stock air box to pick up a cold air intake that's great for engine performance, efficiency, throttle response, and of course, power and torque. Now, we're gonna test all that on a Dyno. As you see we've got our '11 5.0 behind me strapped to the Dyno. So first, we're gonna establish our baseline numbers with 87 octane, we'll install the JLT Performance intake, and then we're gonna run it with 93 octane and a tune. Now, I do want to point out here this one does require a tune so we will be installing that today. So you want to pick that up separately but once you do, you'll unleash the full potential of this intake. So the first thing we want to talk about is the star player in the whole kit, this filter. This is gonna be an oiled filter with an S&B Powerstack. Basically, the job of this intake filter is to filter out all the nasty particles and elements that you don't want coming into the engine bay and the engine itself. Now it's got some really high-quality cotton gauze with specially-treated oiled filter elements just to make sure that its filtration capabilities are topnotch. Now, it's got that Powerstack top here to make sure that it is pulling in as much cold air as possible, getting it through the ABS plastic tubing. Now, that's the next step in the kit here. That ABS plastic is gonna flow air very nicely through the tubing here and a lot smoother than your aluminum intakes. The cool thing about ABS plastic as well as opposed to some of the other materials is it doesn't retain heat as much. Now, that's actually a really good thing here with a cold air intake. Now, of course, you want cold air coming in and you don't want it to heat up as much. Some aluminum tubings out there do retain some of that engine bay heat so they can heat up some of that air flowing through. ABS plastic doesn't do that as much. It dissipates heat a lot easier. It also includes a roto-molded heat shield or air box shield, so basically, what this is gonna do is keep out some of that excess heat from reaching the filter, allowing cold air to squeeze in through the opening here, getting it through the tubing and back into your manifold. So that's gonna be a huge upgrade over the factory option which doesn't do it as well as some of the JLT options here. Now, of course, it comes with all the rubber couplers that you need, all of your band clamps that you'll need, and some of the hardware to get this installed which I'll show you in just a bit. So you can find the JLT Performance Series 2 intake for your S197 for just about 300 bucks, maybe a little less than, which, in my personal opinion, isn't a bad price at all. Typically, your non-tune required intakes are a little bit less expensive than some of the tune required options and because this is a tune required option, I'm a little surprised on the price tag compared to the quality materials we're getting here. High-quality S&B Powerstack filter, ABS plastic tubing, roto-molded heat shield, all really nice, really well-fitting to your 5.0, so a little under 300 bucks gets you what you see here. You want to keep in mind that because it requires a tune, you'll have to pick up a custom tune to get this to work well and to really maximize the performance there, so that is an added cost, but for the intake itself, it's really not that bad. The first thing we're gonna do is establish our baseline numbers, we'll tune it, and see what the power gains are. Taking a closer look at our stock numbers, we're looking at 344 horsepower and 303 foot-pounds of torque at the rear wheels. We then, of course, uploaded our 93 octane tune with 93 octane in the tank and we're looking at 366 horsepower and 316 foot-pounds of torque. Now, peak gains, that's a total of 22 horsepower and 13 foot-pounds of torque with curve gains of 42 horsepower and 40 foot-pounds of torque at the rear. And that's just honestly a pretty decent gain to pull off some noticeable power.Tools needed for this install are a ratchet, extension, flathead screwdriver, Phillips head screwdriver, and a 10-millimeter socket. For automatic Mustang owners, they'll need a drill, 3/8 drill bit, and a half-inch drill bit. All right, guys, so before we can install our JLT cold air intake, we have to uninstall the factory air box. Now, it's extremely simple. The whole thing can pretty much come off in one piece. A couple of things we have to disconnect here between our mass air sensor, a couple of hoses and, of course, the sound delete plug, and we're gonna use a flathead screwdriver to disconnect our coupler which is clamped on right by the throttle body, disconnect everything. Then there's one 10-millimeter bolt we remove for the air box and the whole thing will come out.First thing, we're gonna disconnect the sensor on our mass air which has a red clip underneath, you just pull back on and the clip will slide right off. The second thing we're gonna do is disconnect a couple of hoses here, it's literally just gonna pull back on them and they will disconnect. Next up, we're gonna use our flathead screwdriver to disconnect the coupler on our throttle body. Now that clamp is held on pretty much right behind these hoses here. All right, from there we'll take a 10-millimeter socket and disconnect the bolt on the air box.Now, before we can get out our JLT intake installed into the vehicle, we're gonna actually assemble it on a separate table just to make our lives a little bit easier here since it is basically connecting pieces of a puzzle. Now, the first thing we're gonna need to do is take a Phillips head screwdriver, remove the two screws holding on the factory MAF sensor on the stock air box, and transfer it over to our new tubing.Now, the next step in the process is only going to apply to guys out there with a GT automatic transmission. Now, if you have a manual transmission, you can skip the next step. Automatic transmission guys will have to drill just one simple hole into our new JLT tubing. Right above the PCV grommet, you're gonna have to drill a half-inch hole into this blocked out space. That's gonna be for your automatic fitting. Now, I'm gonna start off with a quarter-inch drill bit. With our pilot hole in place, we'll upgrade to a half-inch drill bit to get this finalized hole. With the half-inch hole drilled, you'll be given a rubber grommet to put into that hole. Take your new tubing and insert it right into that hole. Next step in our process, we're gonna grab one of our couplers. Now, you'll see you have two different sizes. The one that comes down in size is the one that we're gonna use today for our stock throttle body. If you have a bigger throttle body, you'll want to use the bigger couplers so this will install onto the end where the hose fittings will go and a clamp will go on top of that and tighten down once we put it onto our throttle body. But for now, the coupler goes onto our tubing.After we get our coupler on, we're gonna go back to our tubing fittings here and we're given a cap here for the sound plug so we're gonna take our plug and cap this off. The final step in our assembly here, on the table at least, is to take our conical air filter and put it on over the other end. Now, you want to make sure you're using the clamp that the filter came with. It should have already come on the filter here. You're gonna go ahead and put the filter on the end, put that into place, you'll feel it snap in there. And then this clamp, again, flathead screwdriver you can tighten this down.So now that we have our JLT intake assembled on the table, the first thing you want to do for dropping it in the car is to install our heat shield or air box. Now that's gonna go right down here and just like before, it was bolted down to the side. You're gonna use the factory spacer and the factory bolt straight in here. I'm gonna thread it down by hand just a little bit. With the bolt threaded down, you'll see the air inlet snorkel from the factory is down here. That can actually attach to our new filter air box. And at this point, we can drop in our new filter, attach it into the throttle body along with the tubing, and reconnect all of our fittings. You want to make sure you have a clamp here as well. You'll tighten that down. With our hoses and clamps reconnected and tightened down, the last thing we need to do is plug in our mass air flow sensor which, again, you just push in the sensor and tap down that red clip. Once that's taken care of, you're good to install your tune and get back on the road. That's gonna wrap up my review, Dyno testing, and install of the JLT Performance Series 2 Cold Air Intake for all '11 to '14 GTs and '12 to '13 Boss 302s. If you're looking to replace your stock air box with a cold air intake that performs a little better, runs a little more efficiently while also picking up a little bit of horsepower and torque gains, this is the way to go. If you're looking to pick it up for just about 300 bucks, you can do so right here at americanmuscle.com.