So being new to the board, I will first say Hello!
Then I will say that no one answered your questions!
First the whole HP talk. You have two types of horse power rating that is commonly thrown around:
HP at the Crank: this is the horse power manufactures use when advertising their car. So the Camry V6 is 268 HP. It is the rating taken of the engine on an engine dyno, where the power meter is hooked directly up to the crank.
wHP: in this case front wheel horse power, is what you measure on a chassis dyno (expect for those weird ones some people are using here on the forum, for which hook up to the axles, I am just not sure about those...) wHP is usually 60-70% less then what is at the crank due to the drive train. Most dynos correct to SAE horsepower and that is the wHP numbers people throw around.
So when someone said that stock is 210hp, he/she probably meant 210whp, which is different. And when you said 268, you mean crank HP.
So now to the aftermarket part of your questions. So after market for obvious reasons advertise in crank horse power, so 14hp at the crank is probably about 8 hp on a dyno.
Taking that into consideration you can then see how things can be confused if people interchange the numbers.
So with your intake and exhaust, when you dyno, you will probably get 15whp, which is like 25hp at the crank. Now that is not a solid number, that is just an educated guess.
Cold Air Intakes do make a difference and do add power, so do exhausts, when designed right. They are not just shiney upgrades. However, the ones for toyotas are pretty expensive and that is why people are giving you a hard time. You bought the offical upgrades that cost a more then the cheapest solutions, personally the stuff you got is probably like something I will get as well. I like the TRD exhaust, I am not sure about the K&N, but I will tell you they do make a difference and yeah they do sound fun.
I come from Ford background when it comes to tuning, however I have had a gen4 camry V6 LE and now have a Gen 6 camry SE V6.
Here is a whole article I wrote about cold air intakes for the Crownvictoria/Grand Marquis:
http://sleeperrides.com/?page_id=3
So yeah, something I noticed here is that there are many types of enthusiatcs on this site. Some are into the car for daily driving and economy. Some for absolute performance and some just want to bolt stuff on. All of it is good with me, I think there is room for everyone.
However, bolt on guys, remember the performance guys will always give you crap, that is just how they are, they want to make their car into a race car and since you are just bolting stuff on, it is frustrating to them, because they know there are many more upgrades you can do that when all finished will culminate into a truly sporty car.
However the performance guys need to remember that the bolt on guys and economy guys are driving their cars for comfort and ride quality (whether they realize it or not). By adding more and more performance parts you quickly start changing the ride, the noise and image of your car (whether in the engine bay or on the exterior).
I personally do both. With the Camry I am a bolt-on guy, it is my daily driver and I love that it has a good ride, can go fast and get good fuel economy.
With my Grand Marquis I am building it out to be a full on sleeper race car. The exterior looks completely stock, including rims, but I am slowly building the whole car out, from chassis re-enforcing to a fully built tranny with a high stall torque converter. My last step for this car is putting a fully forged bottom end in and then blowing it.
So yeah, kind of long winded, but I figured I would introduce myself as well
Dyno results on V6 with TRD exhaust & K&N typhoon
), at least more honest than worrying about their reputed horsepower gains to trick yourself into thinking you can "beat any car" logic that the OP is clearly thinking about.
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