Install Guide: 2011-2014 F150 5.0L aFe Cold Air Intake on our 2012 F150 5.0L FX4 Project Truck

Posted by Jason Locke on 11/14/2013 to Install guides

aFe is a good friend of ours, and their aftermarket F150 performance parts made up a good portion of our 2011 EcoBoost project truck. So when we wanted to drop a cold air intake onto our newer 2012 F150 5.0L FX4 Project truck, aFe quickly stepped up to the plate with their F150 5.0L Stage 2 Cold Air Intake. This kit comes with a high-performance Pro 5R oiled air filter and replaces the factory air box and paper filter for serious power gains. aFe's kit is one of the more heavy-duty and solid intake systems that you can find for your truck, and is a perfect "first upgrade" for stock F150s.

Like practically all of our other installs, we took our 2012 FX4 down to Extreme Performance out in Goodyear, Arizona, for our aFe cold air intake install. Kris, his expert hands, and his tattoos were again helping us out and got our kit all prepped in ready to go in practically no time at all.

As is the case with every cold air intake on the planet, the first step of our aFe intake installation was to rip out our stock inlet tubing and the top half of the factory air box. We technically already had this done for our earlier Airaid intake installation, but the process is exactly the same. First, Kris unhooked the vacuum line, PCV breather tube, and MAF sensor harness from the stock intake.

2011-2014 F150 5.0L aFe Stage 2 Cold Air Intake Install

With the hoses and MAF free, Kris loosened the band clamp on the throttle body and released the stock air box clamps. He then pulled the entire factory air box out of the truck.

Generally, this would be the time to assemble the aFe intake by inserting the Pro 5R filter into the heat shield mount, fitting on the angled coupler, inserting the inlet tubing, fitting on the end coupler, and then band clamping everything together. Well, our aFe Stage 2 kit was already put together due to the dire need for some extra product photos. The good news is that the process is pretty easy and straightforward. Here's some before and after pictures:

2011-2014 F150 5.0L aFe Stage 2 Cold Air Intake Install

Now back to bigger and better things: Kris rescued the MAF sensor from the stock MAF housing and then installed it into aFe's inlet tube MAF housing.

2011-2014 F150 5.0L aFe Stage 2 Cold Air Intake Install

Here's where things in our install star to diverge from aFe's instructions. aFe includes a new hose for the PCV breather and their inlet tube doesn't come with a quick-fit connection. This requires some cutting of the factory hoses. This usually wouldn't be a big deal, but we were doing power testing of different intakes along with the installs, and we weren't sure which intake was going to stay on the truck. To that end, Kris jury-rigged up a piece of hose to fit our truck without cutting.

With our intake sitting pretty with all the necessary gear installed, we dropped the whole assembly into our truck, starting with the heat shield and filter into the bottom half of our truck's air box.

Kris then pulled the end coupler over the throttle body and made sure the inlet tube cleared other components in the bay.

Everything looked good, so Kris went around and tightened all the band clamps on the intake.

2011-2014 F150 5.0L aFe Stage 2 Cold Air Intake Install

Once everything was tightened down, Kris hooked up all the hoses and reconnected the MAF sensor to its harness.

2011-2014 F150 5.0L aFe Stage 2 Cold Air Intake Install

And that was that. Our aFe Stage 2 cold air intake install was complete.

1 Comments

Matt

Date 11/25/2014

I have a 2013 stx with the 5.0 in it. I have after market exhaust that is cat back. 3" that goes into a magnaflo muffler that's single inlet/dual outlet 2.5". I have a sct preloaded programmer. I going to put a CAI on it but was wondering is afe better than k@n and go with the 85mm or 90mm throttle body for it. I also want to put some shorty torque tube headers on it but, what do u think would be the best way togo to get the most hp without droping a lot of money.

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