Originally Posted by Fanman

Yoou are right, the plastic is there as a heat shield. There are some short ram designs that had no plastic around it, and the intake temps went up dramatically because if it.

You should be skeptical of those hp claims. K&N had an initial design for the RX8 that claimed about 8 hp, and when the people dynoed it, they found a loss in hp. The new design is supposed to be better, but 9 hp is still unrealistic, especially with the short ram design.