Unfortunately, it is more than that. I spent much of the day swapping in and out the calmini intake and the stock intake. The pinging only occurs with the calmini and it occurs on light acceleration as well. With the stock intake, try as I may I cannot get it to ping. Also, the calmini does affect the transmission shift points. There seems to be more torque on the low end, but 0-70mph definitely takes longer.

I did an experiment. I bought a rubbermaid container, cut out a 3" diameter hole in the bottom of it, and slipped it over the cone filter. I cut two 1" square holes in the lid and capped the container. Basically my filter is encased completely in the rubbermaid container and is forced to breathe through the 2 1" square holes. To me this should be even more restrictive than the stock intake which has a 2 3/4" diameter inlet. I found that while the pinging is gone, the transmission shift points are still screwed up. I then tried the same setup with the stock intake elbow with the same result. So there is something with the stock intake box and/or the nature of a cone filter vs panel filter. I'm using the K&N panel filter for the stock intake setup BTW.

In the end, I'm back to the stock intake box <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />