myself in another life... said:
UPS Tossed the box over my fence today, so I went ahead and did the install after work. Here are some pictures of the install and my own observations on the system as a whole.
1) Battery Tray: It's gotta stay in. The Volant box replaces the stock gromments with clip-nuts and bolts down to the origional tabs hanging off of the battery tray. For those of you that ripped the thing out for the K&N, SORRY!!!
2) '04 Breather tube: Maybe this applies to the '05 as well. The origional breather runs into a foot long plastic tube into the box lid. The Volant setup gives you a gromment next to the throttle body and the intake temp sensor. They don't include a smaller tube! I improvised this by sawing the footer down to a few inches. While I'm near the temperature sensor, I have to mention that the little bugger looks quite fragile and it's a MOTHER to pull out of the stock air tube!
3) Fit & Finish: The access hole on top of the airbox I got was too small for the filter. A little measuring and Rotozip effort fixed that problem right away. I still have to wrestle the filter into place after it's actaually in the box. That thing is HUGE! There is a second additional bracket to be installed on the lower front of the box that bolts down to a stock bolt next to the radiator. There was no hole drilled for this bracket. Over all, the plastic is burr free and well textured and the aluminum cover has a protective sheet for shipping. The metal brackets were painted black, but it didn't adhere very well and was heavily chipped and scratched upon delivery.
4) Water: The box itself isn't actually drilled with drains for water but it has a large square opening at the front of the box behind the grill backing. If anything ( like, say... a small bird! ) gets sucked in, it should fall out this hole before giving you any trouble with the filter. This hole is behind the grill backing so it would work better as an outlet than an inlet. If water gets in, it would pool in the box by about an inch before it's high enough to pour out the hole. It would get nowhere near the filter except for any mist that the engine would suck in. On a side note, the box isn't fully sealed anyway. A couple of 1/8" holes at or near the lowest point wouldn't hurt. I poured a couple of ounces of water into the box after the install and looked for where it pooled. I drilled a hole at the base of the pool and another about a inch uphill for luck.
5) Scoop Alignment: More of an art than a science. The metal bars had to be bent a bit to get things right. And some trial&error was necessary to make sure that the hood didn't crash into the scoop and knock it to a crazy angle.
6) Experience: I'll play with the truck more before I come to any SOTP conclusions, but upon first drive here are my observations:
>Vacuum Hiss is quite apparent when decelerating and especially when downshifting. Nothing that buries the stock exhaust gurgle though.
>It does howl a bit more than the stock intake, but not disturbingly so. I'd say that the intake is closely in chorus with the exaust when wide open. Equal sound front&back.
>My initial SOTP response is, DAMN!
