camarors8992 said:
If it would be THAT much more beneficial to put it on the passenger side then why do the after market companies place them on the drivers side as well ?
A couple very good reasons, they need the consumer to be able to bolt it in with a couple worm clamps and a screw or two. Anything they make that requires moving stuff like dip stick tubes, Washer fluid res's etc. is sure to be returned by most guys. And makes it much more expensive to engineer.
Most makers know their intake is sub optimal, but they can't fit it inside the factory air box without sawing stuff up, and moving it over to the cooler side STILL sucks engine bay heat. Many also provide a "heat shield" which has minimal effect and is mostly a plecebo to make you think it's drawing cooler air. It still draws hot air around the loose fitted shield.
The best of those do restrict engine heat by sealing to the hood and tightly to the sheet metal, which allows the filter to draw air through the small square opening that the factory box plugs into.
A few companies (Volant and Banks best among them) both engineer Air boxes. Banks uses CAD and a really trick solid modeling instant prototyping CNC machine to carve out working plastic prototypes on the fly...
Most however know you will never dyno their tube, and that you may get a few HP as the gain from a high flow filter washes out the loss from sucking hot engine bay air... It should be said though; even a better flowing filter is not going to wash out the loss from sucking the air off of header! that air will not only be well over 200 degrees, but it will fluctuate wildly spiking up hundreds of degrees, which may even cause your ECU to dance around trying to compensate for sudden rich and lean conditions.
The best home brew solution is a cowl induction hood and an air box sealed to the opening like this one (full write up is in the mods forum):
This breaths air that is barely above ambient temps (2 to 6 degrees warmer than the outside air) which I can probably get down to 1 to 2 by sealing it a little better, and insulating the tube itself.
10 degrees is roughly 1% loss or gain in horse power, without the shield and the cowl opening this intake averaged about 60 degrees hotter than ambient at sustained highway speeds, it was worse at slower speeds where the hot air wasn't being drawn out of the engine bay.
