Installation Time
(approx) 1 Hour
Difficulty Level:
Simple installation for anyone.
Installation Guides
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Hey, guys. Adam here with americantrucks.com, and today we're going to be talking about and installing the Airaid MXP Series Cold Air Intake with the Black SynthaMax dry filter, available for the 2014 to 2018 5.3 liter Silverado and Sierra 1500s. You should be checking out this cold air intake if you're looking to upgrade from your factory air box to something that's gonna help your engine breathe a lot better, have a better air-fuel mixture, leading to a better fuel efficiency, giving you a little bit more power, and of course, just a better-performing engine. This particular option has night and day difference when it comes to the quality of the materials, the build, and the performance it's going to result in. That intake filter, of course, is the Black SynthaMax dry filter, as opposed to an oil filter. It'll require less maintenance than an oil filter, of course, you don't have to worry about re-oiling it every time your routine maintenance comes around. And with that, you are also going to be able to use it as a washable and reusable filter. No need to replace it every couple of thousand miles, and I think the black filter looks a lot better under the hood, my personal opinion. Of course, to each their own. The rest of the tubing here, of course, is gonna have that high-density polyethylene build. It's a lot more heat-resistant, crack-resistant. It looks pretty good under the hood, a lot better than the factory intake. Of course, we have the Airaid sticker that you can throw right on top. New couplers, new clamps, new hardware. Everything's gonna be included in the kit for you for right around 417 bucks. Now, of course, we're not gonna throw this on the dyno today. It does not require a tune, so we're not gonna be dynoing it for you, but what you can expect is about single-digit gains in the horsepower and torque region. Something that you might be able to feel slightly. It's definitely not gonna make the world of difference when it comes to power, but you can expect a small performance gain in that department. That nano filter is gonna be doing a lot better job than your factory cotton gauze. It'll do a lot better job with some of the other aftermarket intakes because the Airaid system is a lot more premium. It uses the more premium quality materials. This filter is a lot larger than most in the market. It's got a premium mesh filter on the outside of that nano filter, just to give you a little bit more particle resistance. This again gives you a really good night and day airflow upgrade. Now when it comes to the installation, expect one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. Have very simple hand tools on deck, common stuff you might already have in your garage. It'll take you about an hour from start to finish. I'm gonna walk you through every step of the process, so let's just get started. Tools used in this install include a cordless impact, extension, flathead and Phillips head screwdrivers, pliers, 10-millimeter swivel socket, 10-millimeter deep socket, 5/32 socket, ratchet, panel removal tool.All right. Now first step of our uninstall to get our factory air box out of the way is to remove our mass sensor. The mass airflow sensor sits right next to the factory [inaudible 00:02:38] box. What we're gonna do, flip up on this red tab, that's a locking tab. From there, just pinch and remove. We're gonna set that just aside there so it's not dangling in the way. The next step, same area. Grab a flathead screwdriver and we're gonna loosen up this clamp here connecting the tubing to the air box itself. Grab your flathead screwdriver and you can just loosen up this clamp. Otherwise, an eight-millimeter socket will also do the trick. Once it's loose enough, you can see this is also just a little locking tab. Lift up on it just to make sure that's loose, and we're gonna move on. The next step is to loosen up the same clamp on the throttle body. All right. Like I said, the next step is a very similar, if not the exact same clamp, sitting on the throttle body, that's connecting the air tubing to that throttle body. Grab that same flathead screwdriver and loosen that up. The next step on the PCV hose that connects your valves here to the air box tubing, you're just gonna pinch down on the gray tab and pull that straight back. Once you have it off of the air box, do the same thing for the bottom. We're gonna be completely replacing these. Repeat this for the other side. The next step here, we can pull out our factory air box tubing. We wanna disconnect that from the throttle body, just pull back, and then also disconnect from the factory heat shield. Set this aside. Next step is to remove your air box, and that, of course, isn't exactly bolted in, it just sticks in these rubber grommets on the bottom here. So just pull that straight up and set this aside. All right, in order to get the plate down here off that the heat shield or air box sat on, grab an extension and a 10-millimeter socket and pop these off. All right. Set this aside. All right guys, we finally got our factory air box off of our '16 5.3 Silverado, and on the table next to the Airaid MXP dry filter kit. This particular cold air intake is going to be a lot higher quality than that factory material. This, of course, was manufactured by Airaid to keep high performance in mind, be a little bit more breathable for the engine, and that reflects in the high-quality materials. As you can see, night and day difference here starting with the filter itself. This particular filter, a lot larger than the factory one, as you can see. And this thing is a dry filter, meaning it's not gonna require as much maintenance as an oiled filter. This one you won't have to worry about oiling every time your routine maintenance comes around. That's really good, and of course, the oiled versus dry debate goes on and on. It's typically known that dry filters, high-performance ones at least like this one, will filter out about 99% of contaminants, while oiled filters, typically about 98%, relying on all of that oil to catch those particles coming through. Within a 1% difference, that's not something the daily driver will notice. When you start getting into race applications, that's something you can worry about, but honestly, in my opinion, you're not really gonna notice the difference between the two, but one thing to take away from this is you will not be oiling this when the routine maintenance comes around. The black filter, I think looks a lot cooler, it's a lot stealthier under the engine bay, but it also differentiates their oiled from their dry. This one being black, this one is recognizable as a dry filter and it's made from really high-quality cotton gauze with a mesh screening to help with that filtration. This is a huge upgrade over the factory one. As you can see, they have that paper element filter inside of this air box with the heat shield from the factory with the mass airflow attached to that. That is now being repositioned on to our high-density black polyethylene tubing with a slight textured black finish. Looks really good under the hood, very big night and day difference compared to this that has that slight heat shield on top of it. This one, although it does not have a heat shield, is gonna be a little more susceptible to block out some of that excess engine heat. Now, next, the heat shield for our new Airaid kit. This is gonna do a lot better job blocking out the engine heat while also pulling in some of that cooler air. Huge difference between this one and the factory one that I wanna point out is this has that big air duct. This is actually on the bottom. This is gonna sit right below that tray plate that we just removed at the end of our uninstall portion. That's gonna go straight down underneath that to pull in some of that excess air underneath of the engine bay. So as you can see, our '16 Silverado is lifted six inches, which means that it is gonna affect that aerodynamic a little bit. Some of that air being pushed underneath of our truck is gonna get sucked up that duct, straight into our filter, which then leads, of course, to the intake manifold. So that engineering from Airaid is gonna help pull in a little bit more air that we otherwise wouldn't get with some of the other aftermarkets on the kit, and especially not with our factory one. All of that, high-density polyethylene, heat-resistant, crack-resistant won't bend, break or any of that nonsense under the hood, you don't have to worry about that. Attaching all of this stuff is extremely easy. We have new couplers, the new PCV tubes, which I'll explain in just a little bit once we hop into that portion of the install, but for now what we do need to do is transfer over our MAF sensor. We've got new hardware in the kit that will help us transfer that over, but for right now, grab your Phillips head screwdriver, remove the two screws holding this to the factory air box. Got a Phillips head screwdriver, just gonna pop these off. All right. Now we can get our factory heat shield out of the way, bring on over the Airaid one. We're gonna slide our MAF sensor into position. We're gonna take our new bolts, which are 3/32nd Allen head screws. Just thread them down by hand at first. Grab your Allen key or hex socket. We're gonna tighten these down. We don't wanna over torque it and crack the material, so, of course, just take your time when you're doing this. Thread them down all the way by hand before you use the ratchet. Now while we're here, we're gonna take these PCV adapters. The L-shaped one, the 90-degree angle one, is gonna go right next to the MAF sensor. Now, they're threaded, twist them all the way down. Once we have that tight, just gonna point it at that MAF sensor. The other one is gonna go right next to where the throttle body would be. The next step here is to install our throttle body coupler. There's two included in the kit. This is the one that you wanna install on the throttle body end of the tubing. Make sure you're installing one of the smaller clamps over it beforehand. If it's too tight, of course, grab your flathead and loosen it up, but we can slide this over our tubing, about halfway down. Make sure your clamp is all the way at the end here, about a quarter inch from the edge. Grab your flathead and tighten it down. Next up, we can put our second clamp over the edge. Again, if it's too tight, just loosen it up a little bit. This one we don't wanna tighten down just yet, we're just gonna place it over the edge. This is what's gonna tighten it down to the throttle body, but of course, you don't wanna forget it, so, now that we're here, we might as well throw that clamp on. Next up, we can install the other one on this end. It's gonna be the same scenario. This is the coupler going on the opposite end, which will attach it to the intake filter. Slide one of the larger clamps over the end and pop this into place. Wanna get that about halfway down, and tighten it up. I'm gonna pop this over the end here. I'm just gonna get it a little snug so that it holds itself in place. We'll come back and tighten it down later. Next up is our filter adapter. That's gonna go on the inside of our heat shield. We're going to install it just like this, and as you can see, there are three threaded holes. Line those up with the holes cut out of the heat shield. Once we have that lined up, grab your other hex head screw and flat washer, thread them in by hand to hold it in place, and we'll tighten them down.Now, before we can actually install our Airaid intake, we're gonna have to remove this bar here. This is gonna prevent us from dropping in our new heat shield. It's a lot larger than the factory one, so we're gonna have to pop this off. In order to do so, grab the panel removal tool. Flathead screwdriver also works. We're just gonna pop off this pushpin here. Of course, if it does separate you can just pop them back together. No big deal. We're gonna grab 10-millimeter socket, pop off that bolt in the firewall. From here we're also gonna remove the push pin clip at the edge. All right. The next step is to remove the bolt on the other side of that bar. We can just lift straight up on that radiator shroud, enough to get a socket in there, and just pop it off. All right. Next up, we're gonna drop our heat shield into place. That's gonna go straight down into that hole and thanks to that bar not being there anymore, we now have a easier access point. Grab the three retainer bolts, once that's dropped down, that we removed initially from that plate at the bottom. We're gonna replace those by bolting this down. Next up is our air intake tube. Now, we wanna slide this under our coolant hoses straight into the filter adapter, and the other end, of course, is gonna go to the throttle body. Once that's attached, grab your flathead screwdriver and tighten down the clamps. All right. Next, you wanna install your PCV hoses. Now, these are included in the kit for you. You wanna make sure you're using the connector heads as well to go on to the valve portion, as well as the intake portion. This side is just gonna get that clamp that's included in the kit. That's essentially this plastic piece here. You wanna slide that over before you get started. The shorter one is gonna be on the passenger side. Pop that down, push down to connect. This one here is going to curve right into place. Just push straight back. Once you have that taken care of, flip this clamp upward and just pinch them together. Once they connect, you can pinch, grab a set of pliers to really close them up. You're gonna repeat this same exact process for the driver's side. All right. Same thing on the driver's side.Next up is our mass airflow sensor harness. We wanna make sure we're rerouting that to the MAF sensor. That'll just snap right on, and you can push down on the red locking tab. Next, we're going to install the dry filter. You'll need to place it in sideways first, then move it onto the outlet. You'll use a screwdriver to tighten down the provided clamps. A flathead will fit perfectly. Now, there's two final steps in this process. Weather stripping for the top here, that'll make sure it seals in all that cold air coming in, pushes out all that hot air against the inside of your hood. After that, we'll reinstall this support bar that'll go from your firewall to underneath of the radiator shroud. But first things first, this weatherstripping. Next up, we're gonna replace that bar. Grab those push pin clips, replace them on the radiator shroud, and you're good to go. Before we get going, a couple of disclaimers. The guys with the 2014, this will be 50 state legal. It's great for the entire country, so the guys out in California with emissions-restrictive laws out there, you can pick this up for your 2014. However, '15 to '18, this, unfortunately, is not 50 state legal for those particular years. '15 to '18 guys in California, this is not gonna be passing emissions. You wanna check with your local laws and regulations, of course, but this particular one does not CARB certified for that state. Just something to keep in mind moving forward. All right. Well, that's gonna wrap up my review and install of the Airaid MXP Cold Air Intake with the Black SynthaMax dry filter, available for the 2014 to 2018 5.3 liter Silverado and Sierra 1500s. Now, if you wanna pick this up for your own 5.3, you wanna keep it right here at americantrucks.com.
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Installation Info
Installation Time
(approx) 1 Hour
Difficulty Level:
Simple installation for anyone.
Installation Guides
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Tech Guides:
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