A good illustration as any as to the effectiveness of the oem cai

That is of course if you trust the sensor readings. Even if a little off, which is doubtful, it’s still pretty good imho:

Truck at operating temp on hwy. ‘21TRD Pro Crew Max.

 

It's more likely rounding up on the display. Even if it wasn't, one degree temp will make a marginal difference in power. The rule of thumb is 1% per 10 degrees so you are looking at a 1/10th of a percent. Not even 1HP.

Depending on which filter bench tests you go with, on a truck you'll probably only see a difference in the high end of the RPM. That is only if there is a restriction which doesn't appear to be the case with an NA Tundra.

 

^ Exactly, my point being we don’t need to spend 400.00+ to reinvent the wheel.

 

The other factor is restriction. Now, I haven't done any research into how much restriction affects HP vs. how much temperature affects hp. But in the old days when I was building and racing muscle cars in the 80's, Going from this air filter housing...


To this one...



Made a notable difference in power, even though it did nothing to lower intake temps, and actually increased them.

So when I added a Rough Country CAI which actually increased intake temps, but reduced restriction, I still noticed an increase in power at the top end. Dyno tests of the identical K&N CAI confirm around a 10hp increase in independent dyno testing and not K&N's dyno testing, which showed around 20hp increase.

My intake sounds awesome and looks awesome, so worth it to me.