Hello everyone...

I recently bought a 2011 Charger and I'm considering adding a cold air intake, but I wanted to ask couple of questions...

Does anyone have a cold air unit installed in their charger? What are some of the real world performance gains. Is it even noticeable? I'd hate to spend the money if there's really no difference and I'm also interested in the claimed 1-2mpg increase, but I wonder if that's true. (see attached)

I don't plan on adding any other power adders or tuning chips as this is used as our family car as well. I need the car to remain reliable.

Does this affect the cars warranty? I also upgraded my warranty to include a lifetime powertrain warranty and I don't want to install this if it will void it. K&N offers a similar kit that costs much less, but I've heard it will void the warranty.

Also where's the best place to buy this. Mopar Perf. is $400.00 (pretty steep), Even Amazon has it and I was surprised it was more $440.00

Thanks for all your input!
Bob

CAI does not affect the warranty but to take advantage you may need to do a Predator tune on it, the tune was noticable on my Challenger.

-Daty

Read this first before you make a decision.

Thanks Daty.

What's involved with a predator tune? Can I do it myself? Cost? Do you know what kind of improvement you had. Also, Exactly what did the tune do/change. I've never used one before. How is it used? Just plug in and forget?

Thanks,
Bob

BobC, I just bought a 2006 Charger R/T a few weeks ago and got a used Predator off lxforums.com for $200. It was well worth it. You can feel the difference immediately. It disables the EGR, changes the shift points, etc. There's a lot of reading to get familiar with all the jargon but it's not too bad, I can help you out. The CAI is worth doing and will get you a good 10HP or so, but like you I am still researching which one to get. Other things that are supposed to help is a colder thermostat and "catch can". Only thing I am not sure about is - supposedly some of these mods cannot be done on 2011 or 2012 models. Read up on LXforums.com to find out.
- John

Thanks Patrick and John. I appreciate the input. It's starting to seem more costly than expected for a gain of 10-15 hp (4% at most). With the engine control module, thermostat, catch can and CAI, this could cost close to $800. That's a lot for such a small gain.

Does the predator control the shift points in the tranny? That's the one issue that I don't like about the car. The 5spd auto from Benz seems like they teamed up with Microsoft.. When driving around 50mph and I press the throttle approx 3/4 the way down to accelerate faster, but but all out, the trans will immediately drop from 5th to 4th and them pause for a second before it will drop to 3rd. To me it's a terrible lag. I feel like I'm waiting to a message to appear on my dash.. "Windows has detected you want to go faster... Press yes to proceed or no to abort"

Anyway, that's another topic...

Anyone have any experience with just adding a Cold Air Intake? Please share your experiences and let me know if it's really worth the money and if there's any real performance gains along with the claimed fuel economy increase.

Thanks,
Bob

bump...