Hey Guys,

I was hoping a few of you can help me out with an issue I am having with my new hard pipe intake with a Green High Performance cone style filter. The intake was built by a local motorsports shop here in Columbus, OH, it is a great piece that replacing everything including the MAF housing. I installed it yesterday with no issues, fired the car up and everything ran very well just as it did with the stock one. Idle was smooth at 500-600 rpm's (I have had the factory reflash done).

Where I have the problems is when I turn on the A/C the idle goes crazy! It bounces up to 1,200-1,400 rpm's, comes back down to almost stalling, saves it self from stalling just to bounce back up to 1,200-1,400 rpm's. Does anyone have any insight as to why the car will run very well (just as stock) without the A/C on but once you hit the A/C button it goes crazy and never seems to work itself out?

I would greatly appreciate any information you guys could provide.

Thanks in advance
~Ryan

 

It's probably just the intake messing with the maf. Evos don't like intakes without tuning, and even then they don't really do anything. All the power is made in the filter element, and the piping is just for show. I have a friend with a X who has a cone filter on his car and complains of inconsistent power delivery and just an overal power loss, which many different tests on this site have shown to be true.

When he rode in my X with the works drop in filter (retains stock airbox to keep the maf happy) he couldn't believe the difference and ordered the works that very same day. I would try putting your stock intake box back on and see if the car runs better, which I can tell you it will. It's a hard lesson learned, especially after dropping money on a mod only to find out that you shouldn't have done that, but oh well. Good luck and let us know what happens.

BW, I think that the AC triggering this is just coincidence, or perhaps it's putting enough load on the engine to make the intake suck in more air which will just irritate the maf with that intake that you have on. Whenever cutting the AC on, the rpms will always drop, but not like that. It's possible that you are still having the idle issues even after the reflash; I have read a number of different people still having the problem claiming that the reflash didn't help.

I know that there was an update to the reflash and that there are two different versions of it now, so you might want to check to see if you have the newest one. Of course, dealers are all incompetant and half of them don't know or care to even look up the info so I hope that you have a good dealer near you that is different from most of the rest. It will all get corrected soon, it's just the pains of owning a first year car.

 

The problem your having happened to me. I custom built a small aluminum plate to shield the fans from the cone. The problem is when you turn on the AC the fans blow air in the face of the cone and you flow meter reads the air and sends more gas thats what makes the stutter. Do these test turn on the AC and get a notebook and shield the air from the fans the car does a perfect idle take the notebook away and the problem beggins. Use your head make a little plate to bolt on the right fans so the air from the fans dont blow directly in front of the cone

 

Interesting, that makes sense. Either way, I still say that with all the issues that they cause that cones aren't worth the trouble. Stay with the stock air box.

 

STi2EvoX - Thanks for the considerate response. As a heavy reader of this site and minimal poster it’s nice to get a quality response with recommendations. Sometimes I debate on whether or not I should post because I don't want to get a bunch of flamers not providing a decent answer.

jose1194 - I greatly appreciate you posting your experience with this issue! I went out and looked at the fans and can easily see how this makes sense. I am going to look into making a shield or box to protect the filter. If I am not mistaken I have seen a company or two (don't know which ones) who have posted pictures of an intake a shield. If that does not work the way I want I will follow STi2EvoX advice and chalk this miss hap up to not doing enough research

One last question for the ETS's, AMS's and Buschur's of the world. I see that all of these companies have intakes with cone style filters some with the stock MAF housing and some with an aftermarket MAF housing and I wonder how their kits perform with the A/C on?

Thanks again
~Ryan

 

I'd say its the aftermarket MAF housing that is messing things up because most of the companies that are running larger MAF housings are tuned and not running on stock ecu calibrations.