The real job of an intake is to deliver more air mass to the engine with less restriction while keeping inlet temperature down. That is why open underhood intakes miss the mark. Once the hood is closed, the filter is pulling hotter engine-compartment air, and hotter air carries less mass in the same volume. Less air mass means less oxygen available for combustion, even if the intake sounds louder. Tube size and filter size do not fix that by themselves. If the system has to neck down at the MAF area to make the sensor behave, the big-tube story falls apart fast. What matters is a clean path, correct air-mass control, and a true cold-air source. That is the logic behind the Banks Ram-Air Intake System. We use an enclosed airbox, feed it from outside air, and design around air mass and engine-control compatibility instead of open-filter noise. Vehicle speed can help ram cooler ambient air into the housing, which is exactly what an intake should be doing.
Gale Banks opens by responding to viewer requests to review a newly announced S&B intake. The video he is reacting to features Berry from S&B introducing an open-style intake kit. Banks frames the segment as another fact check and immediately focuses on what he sees as a contradiction in S&B's message. In the S&B presentation, Berry says that for years the company has promoted closed intake systems as the better solution, but is now releasing an open intake because some customers want that style. He still describes a sealed-box closed intake as the best choice for a vehicle, yet says S&B intends to offer an open version for buyers who prefer it.
Banks objects to the idea of selling an intake configuration that the presenter himself does not describe as the best-performing option. He interprets Berry's explanation as an admission that the product exists to satisfy demand rather than because it is the superior engineering solution. In the S&B description, the intake is presented as having a clean installation, no check-engine lights, and CARB exemption, which Berry lists as key attributes of a good intake kit. Banks does not dispute those points directly, but he argues that they do not answer the more important question of whether the design actually improves airflow and engine performance in a meaningful way.
The main technical issue Banks identifies is the intake tube design. Berry highlights what he calls an enormous intake tube, with an opening around 5.5 by 6 inches, and says S&B uses a special insert so the system can retain a very large tube while avoiding check-engine lights and eliminating the need for a tune. Banks then examines the tube and focuses on the internal insert, which reduces the cross-sectional area near the mass airflow sensor. His criticism is that the intake appears large from the outside, but internally necks down where the MAF sensor reads airflow.
According to Banks, this reduction is not incidental; it is necessary. He explains that if the tube diameter is increased substantially without compensating for the MAF sensor calibration, the sensor will not read correctly. To restore the air velocity seen by the sensor to something closer to the OEM condition, the cross-sectional area must be reduced at that point. In his view, that means the apparent benefit of the oversized tube is undermined by the restriction introduced to keep the electronics happy. He also argues that reshaping the airflow from round to rectangular and back again adds unnecessary disturbance to the air path.
Banks uses the insert to illustrate a broader engineering limitation in aftermarket intake design. He says the real obstacle to running a genuinely larger tube is not simply packaging, but the fact that the MAF sensor must still produce a correct signal for the engine management system. If the sensor reading is wrong, drivability and diagnostic issues can follow. In his interpretation, S&B's insert is a workaround that preserves stock-like sensor behavior at the cost of the larger flow area the product advertises.
He contrasts this with Banks' own approach on the 2020-and-up Duramax Ram-Air system. There, he says, Banks uses a large tube without an internal restrictor because the company developed and patented an air mass control module. That module adjusts the MAF sensor signal so the reading remains correct even with a larger intake tract. Banks presents this as giving his engineering team design freedom that other companies do not have, allowing them to optimize tube geometry without being forced to choke the passage down at the sensor.
A central point in Banks' critique is that intake performance should be judged by mass airflow, not simply by cubic feet per minute. He emphasizes that the MAF sensor measures the mass of the air entering the engine, and that engine management is concerned with pounds of air, because fuel is metered against air mass to achieve the proper air-fuel ratio. More pounds of air, combined with the corresponding fuel, produce more power.
Banks argues that quoting airflow in CFM without accounting for air temperature can be misleading. A cubic foot of hot air contains less mass than a cubic foot of cooler air because the hotter air is less dense. For that reason, he says, an intake can show impressive volumetric flow numbers yet still deliver less useful oxygen to the engine if it is drawing hotter underhood air. His standard, therefore, is not just whether an intake moves more volume, but whether it preserves ambient air density all the way to the turbocharger, or to the throttle body on a spark-ignition engine.
This leads to Banks' objection to the open-element layout itself. He argues that placing the filter under the hood exposes it to elevated engine-bay temperatures, reducing air density before the air even reaches the engine. In his view, a large open filter does not solve that problem. Even if the filter and tube are physically bigger, the engine may still receive fewer pounds of air per unit volume because the incoming air is hotter.
Banks says this is why his Ram-Air systems are designed to seek the coolest available ambient air rather than simply maximizing exposed filter area under the hood. He describes true ram-air as using vehicle speed to force cooler outside air into the intake housing and around the filter, helping maintain lower intake-air temperature through the filter and into the engine. By contrast, he characterizes the S&B open intake as a short path for hot air directly into the filter. His conclusion is that such a system may outflow another intake in a simple bench comparison yet still make less horsepower in actual vehicle operation because the delivered air is less dense.
Banks also comments on S&B's Ford application, where Berry says the company relocates the batteries to the rear of the engine bay area to allow a shorter intake tube and eliminate restriction. Banks disputes both the airflow logic and the mechanical wisdom of that choice. He says that on the 2017 to 2019 Power Stroke, Banks does not relocate the battery and instead designs ducting that keeps the air filter where it belongs while preserving airflow. He again stresses that the relevant metric is mass flow, not just CFM.
Mechanically, Banks criticizes the relocated battery tray because the battery weighs about 45 pounds and is mounted far out on the sheet-metal fender well. He compares that arrangement to placing a weight at the end of a diving board. Under rough-road conditions, bouncing loads can multiply the effective force, turning that 45-pound battery into something more like a 200-pound dynamic load acting on sheet metal. He questions the long-term durability of such a mounting strategy and says Banks chose instead to leave the battery in its original location and engineer the intake path around it.
In the S&B video, Berry claims the intake improves airflow by more than 50 percent while maintaining very high filtration efficiency, regardless of whether the buyer chooses the dry or cleanable filter. Banks does not accept that airflow claim at face value because, in his view, the more important issue is what kind of air the system is actually delivering and how the MAF-related insert affects the real flow path. He predicts that eventually the discussion will have to shift from simple airflow numbers to mass flow and temperature, because those are the variables that determine engine performance.
He also notes that the intake is marketed as a quick installation, taking less than 30 minutes, but he treats ease of installation as secondary to the underlying engineering. For Banks, a short, simple intake path is not automatically better if it is simply a short path to hot underhood air.
Banks closes with a blunt assessment: he believes the open intake shown in the S&B video is technically flawed. His objections center on three points presented in sequence throughout the reaction. First, he sees the product as a compromise sold to satisfy customer preference rather than because it is the best-performing design. Second, he argues that the oversized tube is functionally compromised by an internal insert required to keep the MAF sensor reading correctly, which negates much of the claimed advantage of the larger tube. Third, he maintains that an open underhood filter sacrifices air density by ingesting hotter air, so even strong bench-flow numbers may not translate into better power.
Although he is highly critical, Banks says he expects viewers will ask whether he plans to test the intake, and he indicates that he will. The recap of his reaction is therefore not just a dismissal of the product's marketing, but a preview of a more formal evaluation to come.