Hey guys.

So I felt like spending some money that I don't have today (gotta love credit cards, hehe).
I went out and bought the AEM CAI for my '08 GTS.
Got it for $389.99 Canadian (plus tax) at JB's Power Center - NorthSide (for you peoples from Edmonton).
I could have gotten it for around 345 plus tax (from AFI Performance), or 369 plus tax (from MOPAC), but I'd have to wait a couple weeks to get it, so just decided to be spontaneous and bought from a place that had them in stock.
Looking over the manual the installation is probably going to take a while, it involves cutting and extending the MAF wires.
I will be putting it on hopefully later tonight or tomorrow. I HOPE I have time.
I'm not going to write a step-by-step how to on this because the instruction sheets are as good as it's gonna get (or so I assume, if I run into issues then I'll document them).

Some extra info:
It is a dry filter (washable).
Tube from throttle body is aluminum (mine is powder coated, looks like metallic gunmetal).
The remainder of the piping is some sort of plastic material (they call it Rotomold, dunno what that means hehe - I guess some sort of process of preparing the plastic to create some kind of compound or something).
I'll throw some diameters at ya later, I'll measure it when I'm installing everything.
Came with 2 small black decals (nice!).
The AEM sticker that was on the tube was all wrecked and peeling off so I took it off... Now my tube doesn't say AEM anymore... OH WELL...

Will be booking a dyno shortly after I install the intake.
So check back for updates (I really hope to have it on by tonight).
No CEL *crosses fingers*

Never mind, the decals are silver... not so nice (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

Alright!

So first of all, I lied. I didn't measure the pipes cause I couldn't find my measuring tape.

Installation:

Total time 2.5 hours (with setup/cleanup). It would have taken about 2 hours if it wasn't for a screw up that I will explain shortly.

The cutting and extending of the MAF wires was not too bad at all. It's very well explained, and the hardware they provide is very nice:
All the wires are included.
Wire connectors also included (they're really cool, they're small rubber tubes that fit over the wire and have solder in the middle to solidify the connection).
You will need:
Wire cutters/strippers
A heat gun most likely (I just went out and bought one for 35bucks - Black&Decker, I'm sure I'll find other uses for it so it was worth the buy) - this is for heating up the connectors so they shrink around the wire and also activate the solder that's in the connectors.
So what I did, I stripped the wire ends and then sort of wrapped the separate pieces around each other for a temporary connection then slipped the connectors over them, heated them up, waited for the solder to get absorbed by the wires and done deal - went really smooth without any issues.
One thing, you probably don't wanna mix the colors of the wires up at this point or your MAF will get screwed up or even fried, but there is a chart provided with what colors go to what so just follow that and it's all good.

Ok then, why the hell do you need to extend the wires? Oh, let me tell ya.
The aluminum tube that needs the MAF mounted to it is actually below the battery and in the space where the air filter sits right in front of the wheel.
I'm not sure what Injen did with theirs (don't feel like searching for it to find out), but anyway that's what the deal with the wires is for the AEM.

Now, let me explain what I managed to screw up.
There is a mounting piece that is to hold the aluminum tube to the frame of the car. It's this double sided bolt, in the middle it's solid cylinder surrounded by rubber. So this piece is actually quite weak, DO NOT tighten it too hard when securing the tube to it. One of the sides of the bolt just snapped off and I had to find something to temporarily mount the tube to the frame until I fix or replace that piece.

Other than that install was easy. The instructions provide the "alternative" method, removal of the bumpers is not required. Only 2 splash shields need to be taken off, and the driver-side wheel of course.

Quick review/conclusion:

Looks alright, not as good as Injen though (or so I think).
It sounds awesome!
It's pretty quiet in the lower RPMs, but heading up to 3.5-4k it gets louder with applying little gas. It starts to roar at around 2.5-3K when you floor it and if you keep it up towards the redline in just gets louder and louder, it sounds really cool.
On the highway it's louder than the stock (but it didn't take me too long to get used to). It's not so bad at 110-120km/h, anywhere higher than that it gets rather loud - but who drives faster than 120km/h? Nobody right? So it's all good.

Performance wise I noticed that in the power range when the MIVEC is activated it picks up much faster after shifting into higher gears.
Say taking 1st almost to redline then dropping into 2nd etc feels much nicer now. It feels a lot smoother.
I can actually feel that little bit of extra gain with this thing on, it's not bad - we'll see what numbers I get off the dyno. For sure it's more torquey, and the proof to that would be my dyno with the air filter removed that provided a few foot pounds of extra torque. But yes, the gain in noticeable. Of course it;s nothing too major but I drive my car quite a bit so I can safely say that the CAI did SOMETHING.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say I'm at around 139 horses and 144.5 torque. Any bets? I'll put 20 fake dollars on mine (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I drove around and put 107km on the intake tonight. So far so good. No issues, no CEL yet.
I might be heading out to the mountains tomorrow so that will put around another 700km total, we'll see what happens.

Am I happy with it? Yea, I'm happy with it so far.
I will be phoning the dyno guys next week and I'll try to get in for a run asap.

The End.

Oh yea... I can't find my damn battery charger for my camera. So no pictures for now (IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

sounds sweet man cant wait for pics. it sucks i have to save for school and dont think ill be able to mod for a while (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) im debating between the aem and injen anyway though.

Dyno booked for Friday 27th, March 2009 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

I'm glad to hear good things about this intake, i have one sitting in my garage plan on installing it Saturday.

You the man rox. Pics please?
I've been going back and forth, k&n, aem, injen(wait for the 2.4l version). The only one I haven't seen installed is the AEM.
Injen claims the most hp, but idk if there claim is accurate because there baseline is so low compared to other baselines I've seen. And there torque gain is low over peak torque, like only 3ft/lbs over peak. They claim 10ft/lbs, but that's not over peak.
Aem claims 5+ hp and 5+ torque, nice and believable.
K&N claims 6.7hp, believable, but I emailed them about torque and they said they don't measure torque on NA gas engines (I thought that was odd).
Pics would help, when you get a chance.

Sorry to side track this a bit but whats dealing with the north end location like. I have tried talking to employee's in the west and south location and it feels like smashing my head into a wall might be more useful then trying to talk to the employee's I have talked to. EDIT: Above comment was meant to be in reference to JB Power not the dealerships.

Back on topic I'm curious what numbers you will see on a dyno.

how much do they want for the aem and k&n? i know on ebay the cheapest is like 350 canadian plus shipping.

Who's they?

Dyno chart:

 dynowithAEM_single.jpg ( 214.06K ) Number of downloads: 27


Max Power = 143.80
Max Torque = 144.21

Gains over last dyno (with Magnaflow cat-back, no AEM CAI):

Power: 5.94 horses
Torque: 3.42 ft/lbs

See my dyno topic for more info/detail:
http://www.mitsubishi-forums.com/index.php...=27591&st=0

I don't know about you rox but it seems the longer the catback has been installed the more i can feel it. When i first put it on a week ago i didn't really notice much but it feels better now.

You might have left it in ur engine bay.... I do that w/ stuff all the time (IMG:style_emoticons/default/thumbsup.gif)

^^I'm in the same damn boat (IMG:style_emoticons/default/00000732.gif) I'm leaning towards the K&N, but I want a company that can give me actual numbers, believable numbers that justify my hard earned money,....AEM or K&N?

I guess I should have mentioned that the results from the dyno will be miss represented. the is a flaw * program that doesnt allow our ECU to adjust normally to hardware changes. the problem is it takes much longer for the full benefits of the add on to show up on the dyno. and when you reset the ECU it still doesnt act normal. i have commented about it on my blog for a bit. Mitsubishi has admited that there are differences but not what they are or what their nature is. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

Works is currently helping fill the gap to correct the problem.

sorry i couldnt get to you sooner for your dyno. I had my results redone by an independant party and the results were about 2 point higher than the TQ and HP figures you go.

either way. its a good intake (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) and the TQ power is what you really want.

Just a quick update:

4,500km with the intake on.
No problems at all so far, so I think it will be all good from this point on (*crosses fingers*).