I've read some posts of people banging up the metal honeycomb on the airbox side of the MAS during removal of the airbox for an intake install, so thought I'd post this to try and help others not do it. (I banged mine up a little.)

To get to the bolts that hold the MAS to the stock airbox the easiest way is to disconnect the MAS. There's a hose clamp to loosen up and an electrical connector to disconnect. Along with the bolts that hold the airbox of course. The airbox and the MAS should come out together.

Once you remove the air filter you'll see a metal honeycomb at the bottom of the airbox that is part of the MAS assy, and this baby is VERY delicate. The four bolts that hold on the MAS have a thread sieze compound on them, and chances are when you try to remove the nuts you'll spin a couple of the heads of the bolts breaking the retaining plastic rails. As far as I know everyone has spun the bottom two bolts, I don't think the bolt-head plastic retaining rails are as strong as up top.

On bolts this happens to, use vice-grips to TIGHTLY grip the flat sides of the bolt head once you spin it into position, and pop the last nuts loose. You want to be really careful, since if the vice grip pops off while you're holding it you can damage the honeycomb at the entrance to the MAS.

Once you get the MAS loose from the airbox, it's the proverbial walk in the park.

 

i damaged mine...it still seems to work fine.

 

so did i

But it wasnt that bad

I broke both of the plastic retainers so finally i cleared all the plastic away, put a roll of duct tape in front of the honeycomb and then tried to loosen it.

 

Use a air compressor, impact gun.
It comes right out, no damage.

 

I agree on using impact gun. If you do not have access to an impact gun, simply apply your force simulating an impact gun.

Hook up your wrench on both side. Use your hand and hit that wrench like an impact gun. It works when I try to remove MAS from the intake box.

 

I bent mine also. I just had a friend hold really tight on a pair of pliers while I turned the nuts off. Vice grips would have been alot easier, but I didn't have a pair.

 

I'm pretty sure the honeycomb is meant to straighten the airflow over the mass airflow sensor. Maybe somebody else can verify this. Corvettes were built with the same type of device. Owners found they could gain 5hp by removing it. Later the factory made this standard practice. That is why the early C5's were 345 while later ones were 350.

Has anyone done a dyno test with the honeycomb removed? Is there a valid reason to keep the honeycomb?

 

I thought the honeycombs were meant for the mass airflow sensor and it detects the air. Someone confirm Dale K if he's right.

 

The honeycombs straighten air flow, making it more laminar. This allows the karmon vortices to be counted more accurately by the sensors on the opposing ends of the MAS.

Bending these is bad and hurts airflow. I'd take every precaution possible to keep from damaging these fins in the future.

On a positive note, you _might_ be able to swap the honeycoms with unbent ones from a 2g DSM or newer Galant. Most of the new vehicles use a karmon vortex, and they look similar enough on the outside.

If you're interested in reading up more about this, check out www.vfaq.com.

 

If you pull out the COmbs, you will run leaner as the MAF will miss air counts, and then only add fuel to what it sees and not the actual flow. But Idle like ****, not a good idea, leave it alone until you go stand alone.

 

Fix your honeycombs. Mine got slightly damaged, but I have had DSM's before, so I was ready to do some repair work to the MAS. Get a set of Allen wrenches and find the size that matches up to one of the undamaged hexagons. take that and run it through the holes, carefully from turbo side going to the filter side. It took me about 30 minutes to fix about 10 damaged hexagons. When I got done, I could see through the thing with no distortion at all. If you are going to modify and use things like BR instructions for the S-AFC or something, then you want your car to be like theirs when they were tuning.

Straighten your honeycombs! There might be some room for error on this, but every little bit adds up.

Josh