Omegabenz. The car that I am talking about is a 90 Nissan eXterra. My SL500 doesn't see less that 91. I am not necessarly talking about the CAI or less restrictive air intake on a benz. I am using the knowledge that I have gained installing these on cars to back up the benefit of have CAI or less restrictive intakes. As for a person who hydrolocks an engine because the driving in the rain ... i have a feeling that they were in water deep enough to get the snorkle submerged in the water. In that case that is the risk you take by putting a kit like this on. If you look at the K&n FIPK kits you will see what they do to minimise the hydrolock situation.

As a whole most automobile manufactures produce very poor fuel/hp engines. I am NOT SAYING MERCEDES falls into this group but this is again a general statement. As anyone who is a drag racer or car tunner can tell you how to get cheep and easy horsepower. By cheep and easy horsepower I am talking bolt-ons and not internal items. I get this cheep HP by 1) more air, 2)better spark, 3) less restrictive exhaust.

Another thing that I usually do to my friends cars who ask for better mpg or horsepower(cheep that is) is to also increase there ignition systems. Take a Jeep grand cherokee. There iginition systems has about 16,000 volt coil. Now when I had my Jeep I would get 14/16 mpg when it was stock. The first thing i did was add an ACCEL 45,000 volt coil with an MSD 5 ignition module, running through 9mm wires and added a K&N FIPK air intake. By adding these few modification I could get 18/22 depending on how I would drive. The car personality totally changed and had a ton more power. Just to prove that I was not nuts i got my friend who had the same jeep 5.2 Grand cherokee and when out to the country road outside of Joliet and did a few 1/4 mile passes. I beat him by about 5-6 jeep lengths on every pass and I don't think that reaction time was that big of an advantage. Enought of my rants......... Got to go change the plugs on the SL500.