K&N Blackhawk Cold Air Intake (09-18 5.7L RAM 1500)

Video Review & Installation

Well, this one's pretty easy, guys. If you own an '09 to '18 RAM with the 5.7-liter Hemi, and you want arguably, one of the coolest looking open-element intakes currently available, you should be checking out K&N's very popular Blackhawk Cold Air Intake. I like this intake for a couple of reasons. Obviously, number one, in the looks department, it is pretty bad-ass. You've got a black powder coat finish on the aluminum tube here. You've got a blacked-out filter and you even have a blacked-out heat shield. All the hardware as well is blacked-out so that's pretty cool. Another reason why I really like this intake is because of the performance gains. K&N does promise single-digit gains in terms of horsepower and torque without a tune, but we really wanted to unleash the full potential of the Blackhawk intake. So, we ran our truck on the Dyno bone stock, truck made 290 horsepower and 273 pound-feet of torque.We then installed the K&N filter and we did an appropriate tune on our truck. Our truck ended up making 306 horsepower and 305 pound-feet of torque. Makes for peak gains of 16 horsepower and 32 pound-feet of torque with some pretty nice curve gains on the low end. The curve gains are particularly nice because that's what you'll actually feel when you're driving around. Another reason why I really like the Blackhawk intake is because besides works and performance, it installs very easily. It's one of the easiest mods you can really do on your truck. And if you're a first-timer, I recommend this as a good first mod. You can install this in the driveway with basic hand tools in about an hour or two at most. So, if you like the way the Blackhawk looks, go ahead and stick around. I'm gonna show you the entire install step-by-step. It's a very easy one out of three wrenches on my patented difficulty meter. So, without further ado, let's go ahead and get started.To install your new intake, you'll need the following tools. A 3-millimeter Allen key, a 4-millimeter Allen key, a 10-millimeter wrench, a drive ratchet, an 8-millimeter socket, a 10-millimeter socket, a 13-millimeter socket, and a pair of snips. Optional, but helpful tools include a knife or cutting tool, a measuring tape, a pry tool or flat-head screwdriver, a swivel, and a cordless impact. So, before we can install our new intake, obviously, we have to remove our factory intake. It's pretty straightforward, and the only tool you'll need is an 8-millimeter socket and a wrench. We're gonna disconnect the clamps securing the factory intake tube to the throttle body, then we're gonna disconnect our air intake temperature sensor, and lastly, we're gonna disconnect our breather hose on the factory airbox. Once we've done that we can pull the entire unit out of the truck.So, once you've removed your factory intake system, K&N normally tells you to remove the breather hose and the engine cover. They say in the instructions that you'll have to make a cut to this hose, and you're gonna have to add some supplied tubing in the kit. We actually found a way to avoid all that. So, we get to skip a step here. You can leave your breather hose in place, and you can also leave your engine cover in place, we'll get to all of this later. So, now that we have our factory intake out of the truck, we have to do some work on the table here. First things first, you can see we're ditching this ugly plastic setup here with the closed airbox in favor of that nice open-element design that I mentioned earlier. Now, the only thing that you need to salvage from the factory intake is your original temperature sensor. It's held in with a rubber grommet, so all you gotta do is twist it by hand, pull it out, put it aside, and save that for later.All right. Now that you've saved your air intake temperature sensor, you can go ahead and throw away that ugly plastic intake. Next step, is setting up our heat shield. Now, the kit does come with two heat shield plates. It's really easy depending on whether your truck has AC lines near the airbox will dictate which one you're gonna use. Our truck has those AC lines so we're gonna be using the one with the cut-out here. So, if that's the case for you, you can discard this one. It's really easy to set up the intake, all you're gonna do is take the main heat shield, take the plate of your choice, and set it up, like so. Line up all the holes in the plate with the threaded holes on the rest of the heat shield, you're also gonna use the eight button head bolts with a 3-millimeter Allen key to tighten these down.All right. Now, that your heat shield is assembled, you can install the weatherstripping in a place around the top edge, like so, all the way around to the bottom here. And it's helpful to have a pair of scissors or some snips, you might have to trim this once you have it installed.All right. Now that our heat shield is assembled with our weatherstripping, we're gonna install the support brackets. These are gonna hold the heat shield in place inside the truck. Now, to install these, you're gonna need the hardware from the kit. You're gonna need three of the hex bolts as well as the flat washers and the locking nuts. If you're using the cut-out heat shield plate with the AC lines, you're also gonna need this little metal spacer for the longer support bracket.Next, we're gonna install the plastic filter adapter to the heat shield itself. To do this, you're gonna grab two of the larger button head bolts in the kit. And to tighten those down, you're gonna need a 4-millimeter Allen key. All right. With our filter adapter in place, we can install the rubber coupler for the intake tube. To do that, you're gonna grab one of these smaller clamps in the kit. You need an 8-millimeter socket to tighten down the fastener on here. All right. Our heat shield is finally ready to go so we can move that out of the way. Next step, is setting up some stuff on our new intake tube. On the threaded fitting here, you're gonna grab this plastic barbed fitting, and this has plastic threads on it so you'll wanna hand tighten this. Go ahead and fit this right in here. That's for the new breather tube.All right. Now, once you got that barbed fitting in place, go ahead and flip it over to the other side and you'll see this little hole right here without any threads. You're gonna grab the rubber grommet in the kit, fit the rubber grommet inside here. Once you've done that, you're gonna seat your original air intake sensor.All right. So, our intake tube and our new heat shield are finally ready for install. Before you go to install your heat shield, you are gonna need a 13-millimeter socket because to tighten the heat shield down to the truck, we're gonna be reusing some of the factory bolts inside the engine bay. All right. Now that our airbox is generally in the right location, we're gonna remove some of the factory bolts that I mentioned a second ago. You have one right here, this 13-millimeter head bolt and that holds the factory airbox mounting plate. So we're gonna loosen that, thread it through this hole right here on the support bracket of the new heat shield and tighten it back down.All right. The other bolt that we're gonna remove is this 13-millimeter hex bolt inside the inner fender. If you're using a power tool, it's helpful to have a swivel. All right. Now our airbox is tightened down, we can install our intake tube onto the rubber coupler that we installed earlier. To do that, you're gonna grab another one of the 8-millimeter fastener clamps, and you need an 8-millimeter socket to tighten this down.All right. With our new intake tube installed, we're gonna secure it to the throttle body with the rubber elbow in the kit. To do that, you're gonna grab the remaining band clamps in the kit, put the medium clamp on the larger end, and the small clamp on the smaller end. To tighten this down, you're gonna need an 8-millimeter socket.Next, we're gonna install our new filter. To do that, you're gonna grab the largest band clamp in the kit and fit it over the rubber end of the filter, secure it to this plastic fitting that we installed on the heat shield earlier, and tighten it down again with that 8-millimeter socket.All right. With our filter tightened down, we're gonna install the intake temperature sensor extension cable. Depending on what model year truck you have, you will be selecting one of the two cables in the kit. Once you figured out which one is the correct one, just go ahead and plug it into the existing wiring harness and plug the other end into the temperature sensor.So, like I mentioned earlier during our uninstall of our factory intake system, the instructions do call for you to remove your breather hose and cut it. Now, if you've been following along and you don't want to cut the breather hose, there is an easy way around it. You're gonna take the supplied tubing in the kit, and you're gonna take that little plastic elbow barbed fitting. You're gonna set it up like so. You're gonna cut the tube for a 3-inch section here, a 7.5-inch section on top. Once you have it set up like I do, you're gonna push the factory breather hose connection underneath the new heat shield, and you're gonna plug this in place to the barbed fitting on the new intake tube. It might sound a little bit confusing so I'm gonna go ahead and show you how it works.So, as you can see, once you got the K&N installed, it really does clean up the underhood appearance. And you do get some pretty nice performance gains out of it whether you tune your truck or not. Other than that, that actually wraps up my review of K&N's Blackhawk Cold Air Intake, fitting your '09 to '18 5.7-liter powered RAM. I'm Travis. Thanks for watching. Keep it right here at americantrucks.com.