K&N Series 77 High Flow Performance Cold Air Intake (14-18 5.3L Silverado 1500)

Video Review & Installation

So, you should be checking out K&N's Series 77 Cold Air Intake for your '14 to '18 5.3-liter powered Silverado for a couple of reasons. Number one, obviously, you want some decent horsepower and torque gains across the curve without needing a tune. Number two, you want an intake that obviously fulfills that classic look with the polish tube and the open-element design. And number three, you want one of the most affordable open-element intakes available that still provides arguably the best insulation thanks to this large heat shield. Now, obviously, K&N is the gold standard of cold air intakes. They've been around longer than I've been alive, so they are certainly going to be a popular choice, all those other things notwithstanding.Install is very simple. It's a bolt-on kit doesn't require any cutting or drilling or permanent modification to your truck. So, I'm gonna go ahead and give this install an easy one out of three wrenches on my patented difficulty meter. Shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes to 45 minutes to get the job done. So, without further ado, we're gonna go ahead and throw this on our truck. But before we do that, go ahead and take a look at our stock dyno numbers. So, we ran our truck on the dyno bone stock and it ended up making 284 horsepower and 300 pound-feet of torque. We then installed the K&N with the appropriate tune and our truck ended up making 287 horsepower and 312 pound-feet of torque. That makes for curve gains of 11 horsepower and 14 pound-feet of torque. So, without further ado, let's go ahead and get started on the install.For this install, you will need the following tools, a 1/4-inch drive ratchet, a 3/8 drive ratchet, a short extension, a T15 Torx bit, a 10-millimeter socket, a 5/16 socket, a 3-millimeter Allen key, a 4-millimeter Allen key, and optional but certainly useful, an impact gun.Before we install our new air intake, we have to remove our factory setup. To do that we're gonna start with disconnecting both the driver side and passenger's side breather hoses connected to the resonator box right here. We're also gonna disconnect the two clamps holding the resonator box to the airbox and to the throttle body. Now, like I said, you're gonna need a 5/16 socket and it's good to have a small extension for this. So, with those two hoses unplugged and those clamps loosened, you can now pull the resonator box off of the throttle body and the factory airbox. So, our air intake comes with new breather hoses, so we're gonna go ahead and disconnect the factory driver and passenger's side breather hoses from each of the heads on the motor. We're also gonna disconnect our MAF sensor from the factory air box.Now, the last step of uninstalling our factory air system is pulling the wiring harness for the MAF sensor off of the factory air box. Once you've done that, you can go ahead and pull the airbox directly out of the vehicle. With the factory airbox removed, you just got to remove the mounting plate underneath. To do that, you're gonna need a 10-millimeter socket to remove the four bolts holding it in place. With our factory air system removed from our Silverado, we're gonna go ahead and transfer over our mass airflow sensor to our new intake tube. To do that, you're gonna need a T15 Torx bit to remove the factory screws. All right. Now, when we go to switch over a factory mass airflow sensor to our new intake tube, you're not gonna be reusing that original hardware. Instead, K&N provides you with these two little Allen head bolts, so you'll need an Allen head key to tighten it down into its new container.All right. With our mass airflow sensor tightened down on their new hardware, we're gonna go ahead and thread on our new crankcase, and ventilation hose, and barbed fittings. They're gonna go on either side of the intake tube near the throttle body. Now, these are plastic, so you just wanna hand tighten them. I would not take any tools to these. All right. Now, our intake tube is now set up, so let me go ahead and put this aside. We're gonna go ahead and install the weatherstripping on our heat shield. All right. Now, we have everything set up here, we can start installing our K&N intake system. We're gonna start with the heat shield, and we're also gonna need three of the original 10-millimeter bolts that you pulled from that plate underneath the factory airbox. That means we're also gonna need your 10-millimeter socket and we have our extension and impact gun.All right. Now that our heat shield is installed, we're gonna go ahead and get our air filter ready so it can be secured to the heat shield. To do that, you're gonna grab the largest band clamp in the kit. You're gonna slide it over the air filter like so, and you're gonna grab this plastic coupler. You're gonna slide it inside the air filter. Make sure it's nice and flush. And then you're gonna take a 5/16 socket and you're gonna tighten down this clamp. And then with this secured, you're gonna grab two of the larger Allen head bolts and the appropriately sized Allen key, then you're gonna tighten this whole unit down to the heat shield right here with these two threads on.Now that we have our air intake situated and tightened down, we're gonna install the rubber couplers which are gonna secure our new intake tube. You take this flared one with one of the clamps and secure it to the air filter itself, and you're gonna take this one and secure it to the throttle body with the same clamp. Again, these are 5/16 fittings. All right. With our rubber coupler secured to the vehicle, we're gonna go ahead and install our intake tube using our last two clamps. All right. Our intake is now set up, the last two steps that we need to go through are connecting our new crankcase ventilation hoses from our heads to those barbed fittings and reconnecting our mass airflow sensor.All right. So, with those hoses and the mass airflow sensor re-installed, that actually wraps up the installation for the Series 77, fitting your '14 to '18 5.3-liter Silverado. I'm Travis. Thanks for watching. For all things Chevy, keep it right here at americantrucks.com.