S&B Cold Air Intake with Oiled Cleanable Cotton Filter (14-16 5.3L Silverado 1500)

Video Review & Installation

Hey guys, Adam here with americantrucks.com. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at, installing, and dynoing the S&B Cold Air intake with the Oiled Cleanable Cotton Filter that is available for the 2014 to 2016 5.3-liter Silverado 1500 and Sierra 1500. Now, if you're the owner of that gen Silverado or Sierra, you might be interested in swapping out your airbox for an aftermarket cold air intake that is affordable, does not require a tune, gives you better engine efficiency, performance, throttle response gains, and even a small bump in horsepower and torque. This particular one here does come with an oiled cleanable filter made of an 8-ply cotton gauze, which we'll be taking a look at later sitting next to the factory one. The tubing is also ABS plastic with a free-formed molding here to give you an unrestricted airflow to the throttle body and manifold from that intake filter.Now the airbox here is also gonna be a huge upgrade over the factory one, it's a little bit bigger. It closes in that filter nice and tight here to keep out the engine heat and has a see-through cover on top with the S&B logo, just to make it look a little nicer under the hood. Comes with all new hose fittings and everything you need to get the job done for just about 300 bucks, which like I said, I think personally is a very good price for an upgrade. S&B makes filters for a lot of different companies out there that you would probably recognize as a brand name, but S&B's own filter here is a really nice upgrade over stock. Now installing a cold air intake on your 5.3 Silverado or Sierra is one of the easiest things you can do underneath the hood. So this one I'm given one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. With very simple hand tools, you can get it done in about 30 minutes.Tools needed for this install are a panel removal tool or a flat-head screwdriver, Phillips head screwdriver, ratchet, extension, 10-millimeter socket, 8-millimeter socket, 1/4-inch socket, T15 Torx bit. To kick off the uninstall of our factory airbox, the first thing we'll need to do is use a panel removal tool to pop off the top, the radiator shroud. Now, this is something that you don't particularly need to do. I find it just a little bit easier to work under the hood when this is not in the way. And after all, a little bit later on, we'll have to remove at least the corner piece to get to this bar right here. So first off, panel removal tool, pop off all the pushpin clips holding on your shroud, and then I'm gonna use a 10-millimeter socket to disconnect the negative cable on our battery.So the next step is to pull up on the red tab and remove the harness clip connected to your sensor on your stock airbox. Pull the red tab up, pinch it, and remove the harness. And then use a T15 Torx bit and your ratchet to remove the two bolts holding on the sensor itself. All right. The next step here is to grab an 8-millimeter socket with an extension and loosen up the hose clamp down here connecting the hose to the stock airbox itself. Once it's loosened up, you can remove the hose by pulling this to the right, and popping it out of place.All right. With that hose clamp disconnected and the hose disconnected from the airbox itself, it's time to remove this from the engine bay. Now it might take a little finessing. You might have to wiggle it around some of these hose lines, but it will come out by itself once you have it loosened up. The next step, we're actually gonna move on over to the driver side of the vehicle in the engine bay, we're gonna disconnect the factory OE hose from the factory OE resonator box. Now, in order to do this, it can be a little tricky on some models here. This gray pin that goes all the way around, we wanna push up from the bottom. That's what disconnects it and allows you to remove the hose altogether.So what we're gonna do is because ours is being a little stubborn, I wanna use a pry bar here. I'm gonna push up from the bottom on one hand, stick the pry bar here, and help push this thing out. Once it gets to the edge, you start pushing and it'll disconnect. All right. So we're gonna remove the factory OE hose from the resonator box on the passenger side now. The only issue with this side is that the gray clip you lift up on in order to release the hose clamp is actually snapped off on our 2016 Silverado. So what we're gonna do is remove the bottom portion that connects to the head. I'm gonna show you how to do that. It's actually a lot simpler of an angle. You'll pinch it with your fingers and pull it straight up. You won't even need to pry it off like our driver side here.So even though you're removing the opposite end of the hose, it's a really short hose about this long. It's not gonna make any difference. Once we pop that side of the hose off, we'll be able to completely remove our OE resonator box. So here is our factory resonator box. This is the hose that we removed on the driver side, except this is the duplicate over here on the passenger side. Underneath here, that gray clip is broken. So there's nothing to pinch up and push back on. So what we're gonna do is follow the hose back here to the head, and we're gonna remove this side instead. Same effect, this will be removed and the whole thing will pop out. What you'll need to do is the same thing you did for the opposite side. I'm gonna pinch my finger back like this and pinch that gray clip in and pull upward on the top. So we can go back here, pinch in on that gray clip, and the whole thing will start to come off. There we go.Now we can pop off the whole resonator box in one piece. All right. Now we're gonna grab our 8-millimeter socket and extension with our ratchet and loosen up the clamp holding our resonator box to the throttle body, and then we'll be able to pull this off. At this point with the factory resonator box out of place, we're actually gonna remove that driver-side crankcase hose from the valve cover here from the bottom portion. What we're gonna do is we're gonna go ahead and pinch in that gray clip, pull up, and pull it off the vehicle. Our final step in the uninstallation process is to use our 10-millimeter socket again. Remove the bolts holding on this black crossbar to our frame. There's one up here and there's one on the firewall side. This is gonna make it a lot easier to drop in our airbox from the new cold air intake from S&B. So what we're gonna do is remove this crossbar and then we'll start assembling that new airbox to put into our vehicle.We got our factory airbox off the car on the table here sitting next to our S&B filter, airbox, and tubing. You can see very clear, distinct differences between the two. We've got our factory paper element filter sitting in a seriously enclosed airbox, padding on one side, very little ventilation for air to actually pull through. This pulls through the fender well, and it really just filters through this box and a paper element, pretty cheap filter from the factory into this tubing on its way out through the sensor. Now that is gonna make its way underneath this resonator box where our tubing sits and connects to our throttle body. As you can see, the S&B option here is pretty wide open. It's got an absolutely massive 8-ply oiled reusable filter here, which I'll talk about in just a second, which has this open top that you can have. Or it even comes with a cover if you wanna put one on top here to keep it shielded and from the heat a little bit more.Now, this one is a very, very high-quality roto-molded ABS plastic, as well as the plastic ABS tubing. This tubing here offers a much better airflow. It's got a very sleek design here, unrestricted airflow going from the filter itself into your throttle body. This one here is a little more choked up. It's a little less quality, a little less of an airflow here going through. It's a little more restricted. This doesn't really help much either. This is actually gonna restrict a little bit of airflow, and as you can see, that does not transfer over to our new option here. Now, all in all, this is gonna be a huge upgrade. S&B is boasting 16% more airflow, a better airflow, cleaner airflow to your throttle body and your manifold. That's also gonna boast an S&B power stack filter here. And S&B makes these filters for a lot of other companies that you would very much well know. So this does have a ton of credibility.The 8-ply filter is great at filtering out all the particles and stuff that you don't want getting into the engine bay while pulling in all of that cold air from the outside. Now, the cool thing about this particular filter is it is washable. It is reusable. Every couple of thousand miles when you do your routine maintenance, typically with this airbox, you do a little bit of cleaning, throw it back on, and you would need a new one pretty soon after that. This particular one, every few thousand miles, pop it off very simply by detaching the hose clamp, pull it off, wash it, reoil it, throw it back on.You also have your option of a dry filter. Now the benefits of an oiled filter is it does actually filter out a little bit more, thanks to that goopy oil that'll be inside of that filter here. Whereas a dry filter does pull in a little more air because there isn't as much restriction from oil, but it also pulls in a little bit more particles. Dry filters are typically a little bit better for racing applications. Oiled is the most popular by far for the daily driver, the street truck driver, or the guys out there hitting the track every so often. So if you're looking for the oiled filter, something that's a lot better than stock, a huge upgrade as far as the filter's concerned, the airbox and the tubing, the S&B option is definitely the way to go.So without further ado, we're gonna assemble a couple of things onto this airbox, get things going, and then drop it into our truck. So the first thing we're gonna do is assemble a couple of things onto our S&B airbox without the filter in it. Now there's a couple of weather-strip seals that we want to include onto a couple of these sides here. Now each side is a different shape. It's pretty easy to follow along. You can use a couple of these to pop them in place. This one here has openings here that are gonna go around this lip. So I'm gonna install this to the side of our airbox.All right. From here, we wanna rotate it to the back. We're gonna install this whole plug onto this open square. All right. Push that in just like a seal and plug. So we have our airbox assembled here. All we have to do now is drop it into place. Now the directions will tell you from S&B that if you have the HID-equipped truck, then you'll have to remove your coolant reservoir in order to get this into place. I find that actually neither are completely necessary. Your factory airbox isn't secured and bolted down. And also, if you do have HID lights and you find it difficult, you can remove this. I particularly don't find it a little necessary. We actually can get this to fit. So what we're gonna do is take our airbox. The S&B logo here with the lip on the bottom is actually gonna be the forward-facing option. This side here that's got this little dip is gonna be on the side of your passenger, where the firewall is. What we're gonna do is slide this into place.Again, you might have to finesse it around a little bit to make it fit, drop it in, and you wanna rotate it to make sure it's completely straight. Once it's dropped in there, check the hole to make sure it lines up with the hole in your firewall. And you'll be good to go. At this point, we're gonna drop in our new S&B filter into the airbox here. Now it does have a lip around this rubber grommet. That's actually gonna snap it into place so it doesn't move around in the airbox. We're gonna drop it in and get it to snap in.All right. So we're back on the table here to assemble our tubing. Now there's a couple of things we have to do to this. Couplers on both sides with clamps, as well as the stainless steel mass air flow sensor plate, and then the mass air flow sensor itself. All right. So the first thing we're gonna do is take care of our mass air flow sensor. Now, you're given a gasket, a stainless steel plate for security, and then we're gonna use our stock mass air flow sensor. First thing we're gonna do is take our gasket and we're gonna place that underneath our steel insert. Now the protruded screws here are gonna be facing up, not the flat side. Flat side's facing down on top of that gasket. And we'll put that gasket into place. Now in the bag with the gasket, you're given these longer screws, that'll go straight through the pre-drilled holes. We're gonna secure these to the tubing itself using our Phillips head screwdriver.You wanna make sure you tighten these all the way down so that there aren't any air leaks. All right. With that secured, we can now take our mass air flow sensor and slide it through the slot here, making sure that our bolt holes are lined up with the holes in the stainless steel plate. All right. Use our shorter screws to secure that to the plate. And go back and tighten those down so there are no air leaks.All right. The next step after the mass air flow sensor is complete is to work on the coupler that's gonna go on our throttle body side. Now there are two different couplers you can use you. One of them is gonna be the correct one for our engine size. The other one is for a different platform in the Silverado. So as you'll see, there's a little bit of a code at the top of each of the coupler around the ring, AI 1665C-00 is the one we're using. If you hold it up side by side from the side angle, the one that we're using has a little bit more of a bottleneck, which is gonna be you the 665C-00. We're gonna go ahead and put that on the engine side of our tubing.Once we have the appropriate coupler on the engine side where the throttle body's at, we're gonna use two different clamps to go over this coupler. Now there's two different sizes. There's a size 64 and a size 72. Size 72 is a little bit bigger, so it's gonna go over this larger lip. Size 64 is gonna go on the front lip attaching it to the throttle body. So we're gonna grab size 72. And if you're unsure of which is which, next to where you actually tighten things down, it's stamping the materials size 72. The opposite has size 64. So size 72, we're gonna go ahead and slip on over top here. Now the larger size is actually gonna tighten the coupler to the tubing. The size 64 will tighten the coupler to the throttle body. So we've got this down here and we wanna tighten it to the tubing. Grab our 8-millimeter socket and tighten this one down.So our next step here in our final step in the assembly line is to take our size 64 coupler, place it over the top portion of this bottlenecked coupler. This is gonna be the part that tightens it down to the throttle body. Now, of course, you wanna leave it loosen enough that you make room for adjustment to make it a little easier in engine bay to tighten down. You don't want this bolt here on the clamp to be on the bottom, making it a little more difficult to tighten down. So we wanna, you know, keep it loose enough to rotate and still have it secured to the coupler here for now. And then we're gonna place this in our engine bay and tighten it down to the throttle body. All right. We're closing in on the home stretch for the install here. We're gonna use our S&B tubing with all the couplers attached to it properly to install it into our filter and onto the throttle body here.Now you'll notice a huge difference in space from the stock option over to our new S&B. There isn't that top resonator box. We're freeing up a ton of room here, so all we're gonna do is install this to both sides, tighten it down, and then we'll finish it up with the clamps and sensors. All right. Step number one is to take the clamp and feed it over the coupler on the end of your filter. Next up, take your tubing. You can lift up some of these hoses and set it into place inside the coupler on your filter. Get that far into place along the molded edge there, rotate it toward your throttle body, and do the same thing over here to the engine. All right. So you're gonna attach this side with the dual clamps and the bigger coupler with the bottleneck onto your throttle body. There's gonna be a little resistance to get it on, but you wanna make sure that it's as tight as possible and as far back as possible. There we go.Once it's in place, you can rotate your clamp how you want to access that bolt. Grab your 8-millimeter socket, tighten down the clamp on the throttle body, and then back on the filter. Next up, we're gonna replace our factory hoses that go to our new cold air intake with the ones included in the kit from S&B, also with these baby hose clamps. Now the one end is gonna obviously go to your heads. The other end is gonna go to your tubing. Now you're gonna wanna slide the clamp over top of each end of the hose before you do that. So what we're gonna do is we've got the clamp installed on one end. This is gonna go down to the heads. We wanna push that down and snap it into place. I'm gonna have to do a little twisting to finesse it all the way down here.Once you do, you'll be able to feed the clamp down to the edge here. And we'll tighten that down in just a second. What we're gonna do is you're gonna bend the hose. Now, when you bend the hose back down to your tubing, you're gonna wanna slide another clamp over top of it. All right. Now we can slide this over our tubing. All right. To tighten down these hose clamps, we're actually gonna need to use a 1/4-inch socket here for our ratchet. I got my extension down here to get the one on the head, tighten down these hose clamps. Then we're gonna repeat this for the opposite side. Good to go.All right. We're gonna do the same thing here on the driver side. Slide our hose clamp over top, pop this onto our header. Slide our hose clamp onto the other side as well, and pop that onto our tubing. Take our 1/4-inch socket and tighten down the clamps.Now the last step in our installation here is to replace our harness here for our mass air flow sensor. All we're gonna have to do is slide some of these hoses back, clip this in, push down on the red tab and it locks itself in place. All right. The final step of the install is to throw the cover on top of the S&B airbox. Now, it's specifically shaped to fit only in one section. There's pre-drilled and pre-threaded holes in the airbox itself. We're gonna take the little rubber spacers, place one over top of our Phillips head screw, and tighten these down.So the final two steps of our installation is to get this support bar back into place. The hooked end is gonna go underneath your firewall here where that pre-drilled hole is, and the flat rectangular end is gonna go back onto your support beam here. Grab your 10-millimeter bolts, tighten these down. And then the last thing will just be put the radiator shroud back in place with all the pushpin clips.All right, guys, with the negative cable, as the last step, going back on our battery, that's gonna wrap up my review and install for the S&B Cold Air Intake with the Oiled Cleanable Filter, available for the 2014 to 2016 5.3 Silverado and Sierra 1500. You can find the S&B Cold Air Intake with the Oiled Cleanable Cotton Filter right here at americantrucks.com.