Allow me to preface this thread with a disclaimer. These are some Noob questions

1. looking to upgrade this BOV. It's plastic, leaky, and (I'll admit it) to quiet for what I'd LIKE. Now all brands and preferences aside. Our cars are obviously recirculated, and I want to maintain that. I don't want a CEL. Can any BOV be setup to recirculate? or is it a specific designation. I can't find anything in particular that says a recirculating BOV or "standard".

2. Suspension, this is an opinionated question, I want to drop this car Low. I'm prepared for the sacrifice on angling over speed bumps and driveways. I love the look of nut dragging low cars. best I've found it the Tien Springs/coilovers. Springs will obviously give a slightly better ride, with the same drop.

3. opinion question. I've read good on the Duplicolor and G2 Caliper paint kits. Going to paint my caliper's black so they just kind of blend in. Any negatives to one or the other?

4. K&N has the drop in air filter. has anyone used it? is it worth the cash over OEM?

5. Trying to find a OEM color, A-pillar, single, gauge pod. I've only found one, and it's a CF clip on. Clip on is cool, I just want an OEM color. I want a friggin boost gauge.

I appreciate any feed back. A lot of these I have found some info on, but I'm looking for definitive answers, from the community who would know it all best.

 

1. Look at AMS, Synapse, HKS SSQV, and Agency Power.

2. idk, I'm planning on going with the Eibach Pro Kit which isn't as low as the Tein's.

3. idk, I would rather put money into a BBK before painting my calipers.

4. K&N drop-in filter worked great until I made a custom SRI. Anything is better than the stock air filter.

5. check out www.ami-customs.com, you will find what you are looking for there.

 

As far as BOV, all the evo x specific ones tend to come with a recirc flange that will work for you.

Go with coilovers if you are looking to lower the car the most but not sacrifice any performance. Alot of springs out there are actually not all that great and can cause more body roll than stock so coilovers is your best bet.

Just make sure that the caliper paint is rated for a high heat application, as any caliper paint should be.

K&N makes a good filter, just sold mine on marketplace because I am running a Cobb AP. Works, Perrin, and HKS have good panel filters as well.

Go to rexpeed.com to find the pillar for a single gauge. That model actually slides over the stock pillar, I had one, the color is pretty good. If you are looking for a full pillar replacement, which will look a tad better and probably last longer, go with ami

 

From the research I have done on BOV. Our cars do not need one unless are boost is higher than 25 which should not be unless you throw in a bigger turbo. The most I've seen is 22 on a stock turbo. Have you pressure tested your BOV? It should not leak. Yes its plastic but it has the same spring as the evo oem bov. This is not my findings. I will find the website proving this when I get home and edit my post. If you really want one I'd get the tial Q which can be switched bottom to bottom with the Tial Q something to fully vent to atmosphere. ( sorry I forget the name of the one to switch bottoms with) in time that is the Bov I'm getting.

As for a drop in filter. I made the mistake getting one. I have the Works drop in and also had a K&N on my 99 camaro. I made the mistake twice! There is barely an increase in power making a drop in useless. If you plan on getting a intake do not buy a drop in. If you don't than buy it because you will save money in the long run. There is no added benefit unless you don't want to pay $30 for a new filter every 15k miles. Get a ams intake, injen cold air is horrible especially when the filter needs cleaning and installing ams or ssp trans cooler.

As for springs, I would wait for swift springs if you don't want to spend the money on coil overs. Having your car slammed is not the way to go in my opinion. It looks awesome but you will bottom out your stock shocks and cause premature wear.

Just my 2 cents...

Tony

 

i've talked to cobb about replacing the bov and they told me unless i plan to get crazy with mods the stock bov is more than ok. If u don't want a plastic bov, find a MR bov its a metal one and works perfect for the RA. Cobb told me that all a aftermarket bov is going to do for a otherwise stock ra is its going to change the sound of the bov thats it unless you have the motor tuned after its installed.............

I have the K&N panel filter and it works better than the stock for sure. With the Stock BOV and the K&N you can actually hear the bov when you let off the throttle. No need to run a aftermarket bov now and if you have a accessport u don't need to worry about running rich. I just barely got back from cobb and had them look at some logs i did and they said i was almost right on for all the fuel trims and knock settings and boost pressure, etc........

I put the Eibach Pro kit springs on my car and love them. They have a sportier ride than stock and reduce the body roll a little better than the stock springs. I took my car out to miller motorsports park after i installed them for a company party and got to try them on the West course track which is the faster of the two tracks (three tracks if they link both East and West tracks together) and the car handled very well against other cars that ran with me that day.

As far as caliper paint i have not tried any for mine.

Hope this helps.............

 

@EazilyAmuzed - you hit the nail on the head. I want to change the sound Eventually being able to retune and hold more boost may become a benefit. but not the intent right now.

To address two points brought up over the airfilter. I'm going to put the K&N in, only for the 50,000 mile life on it or whatever it is. However, if it addresses the "I can't hear my own damn BOV" issue then that could work.(That is a bit ricey, but damnit I want to hear my turbo!). Also, did you have any tune done with the filter on? the last thing I want to do is mess up my AFR by adding in more Air. I imagine the ECU will compensate though?

As far as suspension goes, I'm going to hold off and just go full coilover, I don't want to ruin any of my stock suspension, just in case later in life.. should there be an owner #2, they have the option of going back to stock.

@RA09 - You mentioned getting an AMS intake. I'm with you there.. problem comes in that I for the life of me cannot find an AWD dyno within 100 miles of me. I know they are there but I can't find one so I can get the car tuned when it's put on.

@psycho09RA - thanks for that AMI link, couldn't find it!

At any points I missed, I'm going to be re-reading this a couple times, thanks for the input!

 

H4ck,

I understand your frustration with not having a tune shop near you. Ams is about 40 minutes away from and I'm still concerned with driving there with intake on to get tuned. I don't want them to do the install. Its easy and labor is expensive. They actually said I could install the intake in there parking lot myself so that's nice and I'm going to do that. If you can go with out your car for a couple days u can mail ur ecu to them and they will flash it for your mods. Just a thought. But I'm still hating the fact I bought a drop in! Oh well maybe someone will want to buy it from me.

 

I keep getting mixed on the drop in... I mean... it didn't degrade performance did it? I'm not looking for increased performance or anything. I'd have drop-in's on every other car I've owned(That's 8 since I started driving 7 years ago) they've always been good, but all NA and not nearly as finicky as this car. Just don't want to screw something up if someones put one on. I'm only after the ease of maintenance on a K&N. I've thought about doing it with a mail in to AMS. But if I'm going to do that, I'm going to just save up for a long while, order a turboback exhaust, new intake, new BOV, and probably(not for certain) a new FMIC. Saves me having to send it off multiple times for a flash.. that **** is expensive.

 

Drop-in filters offer better performance, but it isn't exactly what they are for. They are designed for better filtration and straighter increased flow over stock resulting insight power gains. Depending on the dealer service department they may frown upon a full intake set-up if you have to go in for maintenance, which may require you to swap in the stock airbox.

 

Yeah, All perks aside, I'm pretty much mostly excited about having a low maintenance filter. It will pay for itself around 30,000 miles. While that's a long time to wait for a return, it's still a high quality, higher airflow filter, which will result in maybe a couple horses but.. meh.

 

[quote=EazilyAmuzed;8488718]i've talked to cobb about replacing the bov and they told me unless i plan to get crazy with mods the stock bov is more than ok. If u don't want a plastic bov, find a MR bov its a metal one and works perfect for the RA. Cobb told me that all a aftermarket bov is going to do for a otherwise stock ra is its going to change the sound of the bov thats it unless you have the motor tuned after its installed.............

I have the K&N panel filter and it works better than the stock for sure. With the Stock BOV and the K&N you can actually hear the bov when you let off the throttle. No need to run a aftermarket bov now and if you have a accessport u don't need to worry about running rich. I just barely got back from cobb and had them look at some logs i did and they said i was almost right on for all the fuel trims and knock settings and boost pressure, etc........


Hi EazilyAmuzed, So you use Cobb AP and also using K&N drop-in, what map you using? and what the STFT & LTFT in your logs? I just want to see if the K&N drop-in lean out the fuel trim. I am using stage 1 93 map with stock filter and got about -3 on LTFT (little rich).

nbxpq3

 

nbxpq3- I'm running the otc 91 octane stage 1 map. I'm not 100% on the STFT & LTFT logs i had cobb look at them since i live about 2 minutes from them here in SLC. They told me my car was close to being on the money without having a tune done and they couldn't believe it when I told them it was just with there otc map installed. They said I was still a little rich but much closer than with the stock air filter and still on the safe side for everyday driving. My only other choice is to have a e-tune done from hbspeed but what little more i'm going to get out of it with the e-tune they said its not worth 250 bucks to me.

h4ckluserr-Try a K&N filter or HKS panel filter first before you spend the money on a aftermarket bov. All I wanted was to hear it cause with the stock filter you don't hear ****, but after you hear the turbo spool up and the bov releasing and it saved me about 350 dollars that I could have used elsewhere. I ordered a K&N for 50 bucks and it was worth it to me, but if I had a tuner close to my house I would have ran a cold air in a heartbeat.

 

Get the Perrin drop-in. Alot better than K&N.

 

I went with the K&N Drop in.

*shrug*

I didn't expect to change the feel of the car at all(only realistically getting maybe 1HP). However, I do get the piece of mind knowing I have a very high quality air filter in the car. I'm already a big fan of K&N filters, just for quality. And as far as noise goes, I don't feel i can hear the BOV any better than putting it on. I didn't expect to much of a change in that department either, they both have the same plastic housing so it sits in the airbox. To get what I really want is going to require a new BoV, CAI, and that subsequently will require a tune. So... I can at that point atleast get a BOV that is 100% atmospheric. Since a retune is happening anyways.

 

i maybe selling my HKS SSQV soon if your interested