aFe SVT Raptor Stage 2 Cold Air Intake w/ Pro Guard 7 Install Guide

Posted by Jason Locke on 4/29/2013 to Install guides

While the 2010 to 2013 SVT Raptors and their 6.2L V8s can churn out great power and a ton of low-end torque, a little more never really hurt. aFe's Stage 2 series of cold air intakes for the Raptors do just that by throwing on up to 18 extra horsepower and 22 lb-ft of torque without the need for custom tuning or other modifications. Naturally, we jumped at the opportunity to give some extra punch to our Desert Raptor project truck and put together a little installation guide right here for the aFe Stage 2 intake with Pro Guard 7 air filter.

As we explained in an earlier blog post, the Pro Guard 7 offers up the best filtration out of all of their SVT Raptor and F150 air filters. Given that our Raptor is purpose-built for long, romantic romps through the dust and sand around the Phoenix area, the Pro Guard 7 kit was the logical choice -- we even threw aFe's pre-filter on for added security. Anyway, install was pretty basic, and we managed to get our 6.2L Raptor cold air intake up and running in about 20 minutes, that included pausing and maneuvering for some of these photos. Easy peasy.

aFe SVT Raptor Stage 2 Cold Air Intake Install

Just for reference, the photo above is of the factory air box, inlet tubing, and surprisingly ugly engine cover. All of which will be departing your engine bay for that dark corner of the garage with your other factory hardware. Now the usual warnings: make sure your truck is off, in park with the emergency brake on, and the negative battery terminal disconnected before you start you install. These instructions should only be used as a guide for your intake installation. We take no responsibility for failed installs. With the boring out of the way, let's begin:

Our first step was to throw together aFe's filter housing by screwing together the bracket and grommet.

aFe SVT Raptor Stage 2 Cold Air Intake Install

Then we slid the air filter element into the grommet and put on the elbow coupler. We threw on once of the band clamps and tightened it slightly to hold everything in place.

While the housing was coming together, we were also pulling apart the factory intake system, starting with the stock inlet tubing and both its vacuum lines. Then we removed the MAF sensor from its housing and pulled off the top half of factory air box, plenum, and engine cover.

With the factory air box out of the way, we dropped in the filter housing and air filter into the bottom half of the OEM air box and locked it into place using the OEM metal tabs.

One the filter was installed and before the new inlet tubing got thrown in, put aFe's new isolator onto the Raptor's bracket mount.

After the filter assembly and isolator were settled in, we reinstalled the MAF sensor into the new MAF housing on aFe's inlet tubing.

Once the isolator was in place, we fit on the straight coupler for the throttle body and dropped the inlet tube into place. We'd recommend tightening up the throttle body clamps a bit so that you can good leverage for maneuvering the tube onto the air filter's elbow coupler.

The elbow coupler for the filter housing took a little more maneuvering to get into a proper position, but once we had got it lined up and over aFe's inlet tube, we tightened it down with our remaining band clamp.

With the inlet tube more or less secured, we installed the new vacuum hoses included in aFe's kit. We were a little concerned that they didn't come with band clamps or twist-locks like the factory hoses, but they went on pretty secure.

We then reconnected the MAF wiring harness to the sensor and proceeded to tighten all of our band clamps and the nut for the mounting isolator. We gave everything a good shake to make sure it was all secure.

In hindsight, we should have done this part before we dropped in the filter, but it all worked out. The last step that we performed was squeezing on aFe's trim seal. The fit was pretty tight and we actually ended up trimming about a half-inch of it off. Having the filter housing out of the truck would have made things MUCH easier.

SVT Raptor aFe Stage 2 cold air intake installed

So there's our install. Naturally, we went out to the boonies to test it out and noticed an immediate difference in power and throttle response. One further note: if you're planning on installing an aFe pre-filter, make sure you get it one before you put in the filter assembly. My big meat hooks could barely get it around the Pro Guard 7 after we got it all in the truck.

1 Comments

Wayne

Date 7/3/2014

WOW, it makes a difference. The only problems that I had was getting the 90deg coupling to stay on it is way too slippery for me to feel comfortable about it. Otherwise this is a great improvement over the stock air intake. Why do they even put the plenum there, it serves no purpose... Thanks for a quality product (2nd day air)? I was not expecting any of this!

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