You'll be alright with the intake, ran intakes on all my cars without a tune, turbo cars, until it was tuned and never once had an issue also of course you will hear those noises, it can be the turbo spooling, wastegate, bov etc the sound is no longer muffled with an after market intake

 

So I'm an idiot. I took a look at all the intercooler pipes and took off the plastic shroud. Sure enough the coupler connecting to the intercooler inlet was completely loose. So every time I hit boost I was loosing all that pressure and that was the sound. I re tightened all the couplings and went for a test drive and holy ****. No more loud whoosh from the front of the car and the power!!!
The power I knew was there is there now!!! Well this is obviously my fault. But I'm glad it's not something worse.

 

So I wasn't the only one! To me the stock evo didn't feel that impressive in a straight line either. I came from a '08 Si. High in the rev range the Evo actually felt pretty similar to the Si. Stock it really only has punch from 3k-5k rpm.

My advice is get it tuned. Either a protune or something like the AMS STX300 on an accessport. It won't feel crazy fast but it's definitely an improvement, and you can flash and unflash it at will. I'm not sure how good the off-the-shelf Cobb tunes are now, but I preferred the AMS stage 0 at the time. It felt smoother, had a stronger low end and produced less knock. The regular Cobb tunes may have improved since then, but I would look into it.

I've been tuned with bolt ons for a while now and forgot what the Si was like. Had a chance to ride an 8th gen recently, BIG difference now lol! Tuned Evo with bolt ons pulls way harder. Tune that puppy!

The 9th gen Si with the 2.4L also feel legitimately faster than the 8th gens, but I preferred the 8k redline in the 2.0L.

 

An open element filter will make all sorts of crazy woosh noises with even small amounts of boost. I will usually hear sucking air noises that eventually builds to a higher pitched whistle at high RPM's.

 

Honda owners telling us a stock Evo feels slower than a stock SI .


Stock SI comes with half the engine torque as the Evo X ( 175 lbs vs 300 lbs ).
Stock SI runs 15.0 at 93 mph vs stock Evo 13.2-13.4 at 101-103 mph ).


Yep those stock Civic SI's should feel faster/similar .

 

Fun fact - the Honda Odyssey is one of the fastest car Honda makes.

Almost faster than the Si.

 

Actually I am an Evo X owner. I have owned and daily driven both. I am telling you in a straight line from a roll the Evo barely felt any faster.

Engine torque is meaningless. It's the torque multiplied through the gearing that makes it's way to the road that matters, hence the measure of horsepower.

FYI the 8th gen Si's only were rated at 139lbft I believe.

The stock Evo is faster, but one's perception and what is actually happening are two different things. I was underwhelmed at first due to my high expectations.

 

I talked with a friend about this. I had a V6 Camaro previously, and on paper the evo should be faster. Indeed, on paper and in practice, it's much faster. But it didn't feel faster when I got it. A couple of rides, and having a friend follow me and (try to) keep pace lead us to conclude that the reason the evo doesn't feel faster is it's much more firmly planted than most other cars. As a passenger going the same speed, he said the evo didn't feel all that fast. Following me in his car, he could not keep up and said it was too fast. Generally speaking, for most non-racers, you judge "fast" not by how quickly things move by you, but by the feedback the car gives you. Good weight balance, a wide stance, AWD, properly applied power, etc. They all come together to make the evo what it is.

Maybe that's not why, but whatever you want to use to explain it, I offer my recent anecdotal evidence: My evo was totaled 2 months ago when another car pulled out in front of me. Since then I've been driving a third gen Eclipse I had as a project car while waiting for the insurance payouts. The V6 Eclipse has 200hp on paper. It actually feels faster than the evo did. Acceleration feels about the same, cornering feels faster/more intense. Contrary to that feel, the time it takes me to get to work taking country roads at night for 28 miles has increased from 28-32 minutes with the evo to 40-45 minutes with the Eclipse.

The basic takeaway here is: The evo is very deceiving when driving it, especially when stock. It's easy to lose track of how fast you are really going or accelerating.

 

I have a name for that feeling, quite scientific.

It's called winning.

And when I look in the rearview and Gustersun McPhonezombienowrager and he almost wrecks his car into a tree trying to keep my line, I relish said feeling and laugh just a little bit harder.