Wat are...?
 

Intakes n headers? Sry im new to car things but i wana learn. So any help is greatly appreciated! :)

Okay a quick 101. A cars intake brings in air to feed the motor. A motor needs air, fuel, and combustion to strive. The more air that can be pushed through the better so an upgraded intake is a nice start to free up some restriction. Same with headers, aftermarket are usually larger than stock which in return helps the engine release exhaust quicker and more efficiently which means more power because your letting your car "breathe" more freely. Hope that helps ya out a bit. (:
If not just text mee and I'll try to explain in a little more detail. Ahah.

Great post, remember aftermarket is your friend, usually* cheaper than OEM, and welcome to the automotive world, be sure to ask anything and everything your curious about, but dont forget to use the search function, most the time you can find answers to your questions.

depending on what car you have new headers is not always nessesary. some times a good cat back exhaust is all you need. As for intakes i like k&n and injen myself i have a k&n cold air intake on my 03 eclipse and im getting a magnaflow cat back exhaust. that is about all the pressure and pressure relief i need.

Intakes and headers
 

Great posts, Stallion and Kaiser!

Picture a marathon runner breathing through 'pursed' whistle-lips, if you can, SoCal19. Now teach the runner to breathe with gulping, oxygen filled breaths, and witness the results.

It's true, an engine does not only run on gas, but a precisely mixed fuel-and-air mixture, atomized (picture a spray bottle mist) and then this compressed. When compressed, the fuel/air mixture heats up, and then the resulting explosion at the precise time by the spark plug provides the explosive force that we have come to know as the internal combustion engine. Volumetric efficiency (how quickly, efficiently, and completely this can be done determines an engines' output.) Different designs yield different results. Some are tuned for economy, some for sheer power.

Intakes come in many different shapes and sizes. Paper filtering mediums are the most commonplace, and offer a degree of protection. (The air that is 'inhaled' by the engine can contain contaminants and particles that can cause wear to high-tolerance engine components, and some sort of filter is highly recommended to protect against premature failure.)

The mentioned K&N, which offers a cotton medium bathed in a special oil designed to trap harmful contaminants are perhaps the most trusted and widely used. Use of these types of filters alone have been said to increase efficiency, which in turn, equals increased output. (Thus the runner taking the huge lung-fulls of air.)

Then, if the fuel-air mixture is mixed, compressed, and burned properly (the computer usually has this figured out) the exhaust system, comprised of exhaust valves, ports, pipes, or 'headers' have the job of evacuating these spent gasses in the most efficient manner. Here is where turbines for turbo charging are used...more on this later.

If the engine can get a cool (density) mixture fuel/air in, compressed, burned, and exhausted in the fastest, most efficient manner, then it will achieve a greater volumetric efficiency than other less-efficient (lower powered) ones. Here is where we get 2000cc four-cylinder engines producing more power than ones with double the displacement and twice the cylinders. Introducing more valves/camshafts, or electronic timing of valve actuation and spark advancement, etc., can improve an engines' output as well.

Hopefully this helped!

Colt-Speed Canada Team