Dinan Cold Air Intake

After using an Injen Cold Air Intake on my old BMW M235i I was hesitant to do this upgrade. The Injen helped the M235i breath better but the constant “psssst” of the turbo waste gate bleeding off pressure quickly went from cool sounding to annoying. During Memorial Day weekend Turner Motorsport had a sale on all Dinan products so I ordered the Dinan cold air intake for my BMW M2 to try that unit instead of re-using the Injen.

The Dinan cold air intake re-uses the bottom half of the OEM air intake box and replaces the OEM filter with Dinan High Flow Filter. The finished install is very similar to the OEM setup with a filter inside of a sealed box. I was hopefully that this would keep the boost noise to a minimum and I was right. In daily driving I notice just a slight uptick in engine noise, but nothing intrusive.

The installation is relatively plug and play. It took me 2-3 hours from start to finish. I found it easier to remove the base of the OEM air box to replace the existing clips with the smaller Dinan clips. While I had the base out of the car I gave it a thorough washing to help the adhesive foam seal stick better to the base.

In the M2 or in a convertible 2 series there is some extra bracing that needs to be cut so the Dinan air filter box cover will fit into place. The install kit comes with a rubber gasket to finish off the cut edge of the brace which I highlighted in red in the image. The instructions are pretty straight forward on where to make the cut. I marked the brace with some blue painters tape to give me a nice straight edge to follow. A grinder with a metal cutting wheel made quick work of this and I used a fine grit sandpaper to clean up the edges before putting on the gasket.

By the seat of my pants it seams like the car is breathing better but this upgrade isn’t going to throw your head back with extra power.