Heard a guy at the parts counter say 'cold air intakes are useless on these trucks'

I was picking up oil at the Ford dealer last Tuesday and overheard this older tech telling a customer to skip the intake and just get a tune. I've had my Roush intake on my '18 5.0 for 8 months and the throttle response feels way snappier to me. Has anyone else run into a mechanic who's totally against bolt-on mods like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

adamgreen2d ago

That tech might be coming from a place of experience with older trucks where the stock box is already pulling cold air. The 2018+ 5.0s have a different intake setup compared to the 2015-17 models. Something folks skip is the factory intake on those newer trucks has a weird restriction in the inlet tube that actually hurts flow at higher RPM. Swapping to a Roush or similar intake removes that little bottleneck. I've seen dyno runs where it picks up 10-15 hp up top on a stock tune, so calling them useless is a stretch if you drive it hard.

annas872d agoTop Commenter

oh come on, "10-15 hp up top" on a stock tune? lol i've seen those dyno graphs too and half the time the "gain" is just the smoothing tricking the numbers. run it back to back on the same day and i bet you'd be lucky to see 5 whp. and honestly who's bouncing off the limiter in a f150 all the time anyway? that bottleneck might exist but it's not like the truck is choking out on the way to the grocery store. feels like one of those mods that looks good on paper but in real world driving you'd never tell the difference without a stopwatch.