Cold-Air Intakes (CAI) for 88-91 CRX Illegal

[Gregg]

OK, I'll take a swipe at this one, and I think that keying on your question #1 should make all others moot.

To use the example of the EF CRX and the 2nd-gen Integra, there's this nice, big hole right near the battery where the OEM intake tract exits the engine compartment. Just so happens, it's possible to run a tube from the throttle body down through that hole into a nice cavity that allows you to pick up a nice cold air charge (as you've noted).

As you probably know, IT rules are built on "if it doesn't say you can, you can't," (IIDSYCYC) and whereas the Honda folks don't have to make any modifications to the tub in order to run that CAI, drivers of other types/manufacturers of cars may (and probably don't) have that liberty. In order to snake their intake outside of the engine compartment there's a pretty good chance they would need to cut a nice, big hole--something's that forbidden.

As I've learned over the past few years with the changes to our ECU rules, the IT ruleset appears to be built on the premise that the rules should, whenever possible, not unduly benefit one model over another within reason. I'm pretty confident that's why the "CAI" rule was put in place for '03 (it wan't there prior to that).