FIPK or UPD air intake system

Winston Wolf · March 29, 2002

Hello,

Does anyone have any experience with, or an opinion about the K&N FIPK, Ultimate Performance Design, or any other air intake system? Which would you recommend?

gandolphxx · March 29, 2002

Welcome to the board - lots of answers here - thumb through the threads in this section and you can get at least 100 opinions and experience on FIPK's - to do or not to do, whose is best - worst, whatever.

The best answer is all of them - the UPD is the newest kid on the block, and popular - K&N has been around forever and is on a lot of trucks here - Volant is relatively new and showing up more and more. They all have their pluses and minuses - depends on your truck and what else you want to do with it.

Cheers

Dihappy · March 29, 2002

I will say this,

If your not doin any offroading, you could use any of them without any trouble.

I know many people that have the open FIPK/AirRaid type and they get soaked with water or very dirty with mud.

The UPD is an enclosed system and many are going that route.

Head over to the "Aftermarket" section here.

There is a UPD group purchase going on.

CMNTMXR81 · March 29, 2002

Volant here.

SFPegasus · March 29, 2002

I just removed my FIPK after 10,000 miles in favor of the stock intake. Things got a *LOT* quieter and strangely enough, the mileage increased by 2 MPG.

The FIPK gave great performance off the blocks, with great low-end and high-end performance, but really seems to suffer in "real world" mid-range driving.

My experience with the FIPK resulted in a lot of intake noise, which basically drowned out the Flowmaster. While some people like the intake noise, the monotonous drone of the intake tends to get a bit overwhelming when you're pulling a lenghthy hill.

I would suspect any type of enclosed system would help alleviate the intake noise.

CMNTMXR81 · March 29, 2002

The Volant is closed and still is noisy, just the way I like it!

gandolphxx · March 29, 2002

The "noise" of all of the FIPKS, while considered an advantage, is caused by removing the Helholtz Resonator that the stock intake tubes have.

TxDoc · March 29, 2002

RedHawk had some personal experience, including track tests.

http://www.gm-trucks.com/cgi-bin....ltimate

"I feel the quality is great.. I made a mistake and bought two other intakes before I found the UPD..They were loud, hard to install and looked cheap.. The UPD is quiet, great power gain ,fits and installed fine.. I have seen four other people at our track with them and everyone loved thiers.. I have about a 1/2 inch from the fan shroud and the others I saw were the same.. I saw one guy say it took him and hour to install and he had clerance problems but that makes no sense to me.. There is only 8 screws to tighten in the whole kit..I think I spent 15 minutes on my install at the most.. I can do it in about 4 minutes now.. I gained lots of low end power and good mid range upto 5500 rpm.. The kit really looks factory as compared to the others, they were just metal box with a cone filter in it."

A search will find some more info, also. Just a start.