Let me continue my RANT about aftermarket power mods. Honda did a pretty decent job of getting every last bit of power out of the Talon and still maintain EPA and CARB compliance. It is a balancing act and I am actually quite impressed. Even the stock exhaust is very good, hell it is good enough to get 160+ HP out of the engine by simply slapping on a Turbo.
I spent quite a bit of money on alleged "power increase" mods and all of them in aggregate added ZERO noticeable power. Noise and worse fuel economy? YES! Power? NONE that I could determine. I do not have a Dyno but 0-30, 0-40 and 0-60 average test times barely changed and some of the mods made the times worse. I have lost count of the 0-XX runs and my neighbors are probably sick and tired of me doing them.
I had some crazy 0-XX runs (both stock and modded) and just dismissed them as flukes. Anyone can take the worst stock dyno run, compare it to the best modded run and make anything look good. I am now convinced this is what we see most of the time on these "performance" mod websites. You will notice one key phrase used all the time to cover their asses. For instance, "
UP TO 10 HP gains!" could mean anything from 1 to 10 depending on which stock run was compared to which modded run and and I am starting to think the truth is WAY closer to 1 than it is 10.
Here is my experience...
- 49mm air intake like posted here - No improvement but still on the machine because I am simply too lazy to remove it. $90 in the toilet.
- DynoJet PV3 - This thing is basically useless. Tried many different tunes but there is an unidentified altitude compensation problem that is not fixable by the end user so anything but the stock tune runs WAY too rich up here. I am back to the stock tune plus 300 RPM rev limit and lower fan temps. Not worth the hundreds spent whatsoever.
- HMF Full Exhaust - Nothing but a real expensive noise maker. I admit it sounded great but it started to wear on me. Tore it off and sold it and lost my ass.
All that being said, I do believe that SOME of these mods are more effective closer to sea level but you will spend $2,000 and get a TRUE 5 HP (maybe 10 but I highly doubt it). The trade off is just not worth it if you are looking for power. The only mod that is worth anything is exhaust but that is purely for sound only. If you want something that sounds better, just get a slip on, don't do a full system.
END RANT!!!