C6 Corvette Bolt-Ons - Back To Basics

The last step in the exhaust installation is to install and tighten the 3.5-inch slash-cut tips. If you’re performing this job yourself, ask a helper to eyeball the rear of the car from a distance while you line things up. There’s nothing worse than a great-looking new exhaust system with misaligned tips.

A shot of the completed exhaust from below reveals the show-quality appearance of the SW setup. Too bad you can’t park upside down.

We weren’t expecting to see much of an increase in output from a simple axle-back installation (after all, bypassing the mufflers altogether only yields 6 hp on the ’08-up NPP system), so the improvements of 1.53 hp and 1.42 lb-ft were a pleasant surprise. More important, the insipid blat of the stock system has been replaced with a deep, baritone rumble that gradually transitions to a menacing ursine growl under power. Nice.

Having lowered the car, our techs were ready to get to work on the CAI install. (The lines attached to the coil wires are for the dyno’s rpm readout.)

After disconnecting the various tubes and wires, the stock air bridge and filter housing may be removed as one piece.

With the intake tract off, we decided to make a quick dyno pull to see how the LS2 would perform with no inlet restriction aside from the MAF screen.

Perhaps not surprisingly, power and torque both plummeted in this configuration, as the engine computer scrambled to adjust spark and fuel timing to match the incoming rush of turbulent air. When it comes to late-model Corvette engines, it’s clear there’s much more to improving intake performance than simply eliminating restriction.

Our experiment concluded, the job continued with the transferral of the stock MAF onto the Airaid intake bellows.

With that done, the bellows and MAF install directly onto the factory throttle body.

The air bridge and filter may then be installed and secured with the included clamps. The final step involves attaching the two rubber isolator flaps along the top edges of the mounting bracket. With the air-injection tube and MAF-sensor lines reattached, the end result should look like this.

We should point out that the Airaid kit does call for two holes to be drilled in the radiator shroud (one on either side) to serve as attaching points for the mounting- bracket bolts. Having determined that the intake was secure enough without these bolts, our car owner elected to skip this step.

Our final dyno pull of the evening showed the car to be making 373.16 rwhp and 366.15 rwtq—up 8.99 horses and 0.84 lb-ft, respectively, over our previous exhaust-only tally. Given the minimal investment and effort involved, this mod seems like a no-brainer.

In all, our ’05 coupe picked up 10.52 hp and 2.26 lb-ft over its baseline readings—all without custom PCM programming to take full advantage of the changes. It also sounds more like a Corvette now, and less like an electric carpet-cleaning implement. We may not be big players on the international stock market, but we still know sound investments when see them. vette