AEM CAI with AEM bypass valve Engine and performance mods to make your Accord more racekar.

[SirMeowington]

I just received my CAI and I wanted to add extra protection for my motor so I bought the AEM bypass valve to eliminate the possibility of hydrolock. The issue I'm having is that the piping for the CAI is 3.25" and the bypass is 3". I had originally planned to mount the bypass valve directly on the throttle body, then add a small section of pipe, which would connect to the coupler from the pipe. AEM says not to mount it this way because of high shear stress will break the valve and it will have performance issues. I emailed them asking as to why, from an engineering aspect (I'm studying civil engineering) why this won't work. My one thought is that for the performance issue, that the entire pipe would be in the same vacuum, so I can't see why there would be a performance issue. For the issue of high shear stress on the valve, installing it this way I can see some shear stress on the valve but most of the stress would be on the coupler.

Does anyone have any input or maybe something I missed or I'm wrong on?

[jman64cola]

the other problem you will run into with putting the valve near the throttle body is it will drastically throw off your maf sensor.

[SirMeowington]

That is the one issue that is unavoidable with this set up, but since the valve should be shut during normal operation, it shouldn't affect the MAF calculations for air. The only time it would was if there is water being sucked up into the CAI and it would throw a check engine light, and I figure that if I saw the CEL I would know what's going on, based if it was raining/driving through a puddle, and could pull over and shut the car off and try and fix the situation.