cold air intake

I just recently bought a 96 Pontiac Sunfire DOHC 2.4L 2 door with 118,000.
Is it true that a cold air intake will mess up the engine. or was the person that told me this really hard on the car.
When i bought the car that is all that came with it was the cold air intake not the stock one.

P.S. i already relized the engine that is in it.

 

Not sure what manner of messing-up would be involved as it is merely a different method of routing the incoming air into the intake manifold. As long as nothing vital (MAF, etc) is removed/disabled/bypassed, I see no avenue for doing damage.

Here's a pretty good article on them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_air_intake

 

i've seen cold air intakes that eliminate the air filter and that will most definately mess up an engine. as a rule they don't hurt anything and can in many cases, improve performance. the thing about cold air intakes that most folks don't know about or don't care about is that they alter the original configuration of the engine management system and that is a violation of the Clean Air Act. for the most part, it's not enforced much by the EPA...but it is a violation nonetheless.

 

sorry about that, when i said "mess up the engine" i ment ruin the engine. i could not spell at the time.

Thanks

 

no, if you have quality high air flow filter installed along, you'll be fine. i had around 60K miles on my cr-v with cold air intake without any adverse symptoms.
what it did, was dropping mpg down by 10%, that it did. quite simple - lets more air/oxygen into the system, ECM corrects by supplying more fuel to compensate, hence the power increase/higher fuel consumption.
if you want my opinion - waste of money unless you constantly rev your engine. simply high flow air filter will work as well, and in my case - i have noticed 1 mpg efficiency boost.
if you pair CAI with turbos or supercharger - that's different story.