Unleashing Intake Potential
Some air is good, more air is better
By Ken Brubaker
photographer: Ken Brubaker
Stick two small straws up your nose and tape your mouth shut. Now start jogging. Kinda hard to breathe, huh? Now remove the straws from your shnoz. That's much better, right? Now you know what your rig is going through as it tries to draw air into the intake through a restrictive air-cleaner system.
One of the simplest ways to squeeze a bit more power from your rig's engine is by installing a flow-enhancing K&N Fuel Injection Performance Kit (FIPK). K&N has designed the FIPK system to reduce intake restriction by smoothing and straightening the path of the airflow to the intake. There are kits available for a wide variety of vehicles, and all include a new high-flow K&N Filtercharger air-filter element and all the adapters, fittings, hoses and hardware to completely install the kit. K&N says that the kit will increase horsepower by up to 10 percent and will help create more usable power and acceleration throughout the engine's rpm range.
We snapped photos as Matt Dinelli at Attitude Performance installed the system in less than an hour on our 5.0L F-150. As you can see, it's quite easy.
 1. The K&N FIPK kit for the 5.0L '92 F-150 includes a new Filtercharger element, vent hose, adapter, fitting, washer, "L" bracket, hose clamps and hardware to completely install the system. |  2. With the vehicle's negative battery cable disconnected, unclamp the intake hoses from the airbox and remove the vent hose from the airbox and valve cover. Remove the airbox from the vehicle. |  3. Remove the plastic air intake by prying the plastic fasteners from the front of the scoop. |
 4. Install the "L" mounting bracket, supplied vent hose and fitting to the filter. Clamp the filter to the adapter. |  5. Before you mark and drill mounting holes for the filter, attach the intake hoses to the filter adapter and position the complete assembly. Drill three 5/16-inch holes and secure with the provided hardware. |  6. Cut the factory vent hose and secure the provided vent hose (coming from the filter) to it. Reconnect the battery cable, double check to make sure everything is tight and properly positioned, and you're done. |