Well, after 3 years of abuse my Magnus Motorsports sheet metal intake manifold exploded!

I mean that quite literally. I was driving home from work Friday morning, and got on it in 1st gear. Just as I was shifting to 2nd I heard a pop and figured I just bumped the rev limiter on the shift.... but the revs hit the limiter and stayed there..... I hit the gas pedal and let off (figuring it was a stuck throttle) and when that didn't work I shut off the car and pulled over. Feeling around under the hood (5:30 AM, pitch black) I couldn't find anything wrong with the throttle body, so I felt around a bit more and found that the intake manifold was compleatly destroyed!

I wonder if running methanol injection into an aluminum sheet metal intake may have been a contributing factor? I was running 30 psi and had never heard of this happening for anyone running less than 40 psi of boost.

Now the good news. I called Dave at Buschur Racing and he overnighted a ported stock manifold to me. I installed it yesterday and the car is once again drivable. The injector O-rings (into the manifold, not the small ones at the fuel rail) are shot, so I will not be doing any "high performance" driving untill next Friday when I can get a chance to replace them... but at least the car is drivable back and forth to work in the mean time.

Later,

Keith

 

Here are a couple of pics of the intake off of the car.

Keith

 

just happened to see this intake, looks a bit prettier.

http://motors.search.ebay.com/_W0QQs...Q5fengineering

why were you still getting fuel when you took your foot of the throttle? was the throttle cable misconfigured ?

 

The throttle prevents air from entering the engine..... that is it's one and only purpose, to control the amount of air entering the engine. If your intake manifold explods there is nothing preventing air from entering the engine.

Keith

 

yes but the throttle position sensor will suggest to the ecu what fuel should be injected no?

 

Holy ISH! Could it have been a backfire? Maybe the meth was set off? I cant imagine 1st gear boost doin that.

 

wow thats kinda scarry!

evoisdream

 

Wow, I have seen some SMIM pop before, but I have never seen them that bad.

 

Looks like the car was lean. Typically backfires through the intake when that happens. Make sure that isn't the case. How does the car feel with the stock manifold back on?

 

Do they replace that for you ? Looks like faulty weld job.

 

Hmm I highly doubt that it was the meth, shepherd has been running a AMS VSR manifold on Straight methanol for a while now. It seems like magnus has a new design for the evo8 now maybe they had this problem too?? I vote bad welds

 

On a brighter note its a pretty clean manifold. do you have a catch can?

 

Sorry to see that happen Keith, but a little hammer work and super glue will fix that right up.

 

+1
very clean manifold for 3 years of running. Maybe the alcohol keeps it clean?

 

The TPS has very little effect even on a stock system. The MAF sensor in the stock system tells how much fuel to inject, and in that case you would end up running up to the RPM where the mixture gets so lean that it will not go any higher since no air is comming in thru the MAF sensor. In a speed density system it injects the correct amount of fuel for the load point (RPM and manifold pressure) that you happen to be at. In my case that was 8300 RPM (my rev limiter) and atomoshperic pressure since the manifold was open to atmosphere.

Keith