the stock intake pipe isn't really a restriction on a stock turbo therefor no reason to replace it until you go to a larger turbo.Sure they look nice and make a little more noise but save your money until your ready to step up to big power.

 

Yeah bro I know the difference between the two. They made a new intake, I was told it's LP2, and it runs really good on my car. I have no idle issues or anything of that nature, I'm on the stock ecu.

 

Not doubting you, I'm just wondering that because the stock ECU is so senstive and calibrated to the stock intake, that if you don't have drivability issues or run noticeably leaner when upgrading requiring a retune its because nothing much has changed and you've spent money on a part that doesn't do anything notably better then the stock piece.

 

My ets intake on my 8 works perfect, same one on my buddies 9 works perfect

 

That is completely false at least in this case.

If it was really better it wouldn't run leaner it would simply make more power. Running lean and drivability issues are the result of the intake messing with the airflow around the sensor throwing off the perfect airflow and tricking it into thinking something else is happening.

Sure you can tune around these intakes but its still a problem. In the end it seems 99% of all power gained from an intake is the tune and cone filter which you can easily buy separately.

 

That's my question. How can it be "better" unless its bigger, meaning more volume, meaning tricking the ECU that's used to a smaller volume. Or somehow its less convuluted so air is getting in faster improving spool, but same voume, but that could just be removing the restriction of the box and snorkel before it and going with an open filter.

 

Its not really a question of better flow to the turbo in this case the sensor itself is the problem. Karmen vortex MAF's need perfectly straight air to correctly meter intake to the engine. If you take out the bends you create anomaly's which interfere with the readings.

If the car starts going lean it will be due to some kind of turbulence in the sensor housing making it appear as though less air than reality is flowing into the engine. None of these things are really good for your car all it ends up doing is making it difficult to tune.

 

That's what I'm having trouble understanding. I know what you are saying, but I don't see how the pipe affects that being after the MAF. Straightening the air would be the filters job, wether its up in the box or on a MAF adapter plate right before the MAF.

 

As I don't have the perfect answer to this I will theorize as to the occurrence.

It does seem to be compounded by the filter location and shape. The MAF does have a set of fins to straighten the air as it passes through the sensor too. It does seem as though the turbo itself may be creating a small tornado like turbulence causing these issues. Perhaps that's why the rubber intake and double bends stop the anomaly's from occurring.

While difficult to theorize on why intakes cause these issues it is certainly clear that anomaly's happen in the intakes causing tuning issues and drivability issues. That is why I usually suggest getting a cone filter adapter to place on the stock intake.