Ugh, thats kind of a big bag of worms. Any tuner worth his salt can tune an aftermarket intake. Well, rather, they can tune any decent intake. Some are worse then others. The fact is that all of the aftermarket intakes that I have played with cause a lot of additional MAF turbulence. This, in effect, makes the car think its getting more or less air then it really is and causes the ECU to inject either too much or too little fuel. Too much fuel isnt that big of a deal, but can rob you of some horsepower. Go lean though, and bad things can happen.

Without any tune it can be very hard on the car. With two of the intakes I played with I saw my AFR's (Air to fuel Ratios) drop from 11.4:1 (Safe level for full load and full boost) to 10.2:1, which on straight pump gas causes high EGT's (Exhaust Gas Temperatures) and early detonation, more commonly known as ping or knock. It your standard car, knock isnt that big of a deal, but on our cars running the compression they do and being turbo charged, which increases the cylinder pressure, its a very big deal. The other nice thing is the stock air box gives you a much nicer, flatter, curve to tune too when compared to an aftermarket intake.

The stock airbox has been proven time and time again to be a better solution if you stick with the stock MAF sensor. I have seen the stock air box used on big GT-35r turbos with no issue running 30+ pounds of boost. There is no reason to change from the stock air box. Besides, with the stock airbox at least you are sucking in air from outside of the engine compartment, which is a lot cooler then the air sitting in the engine compartment. This not only allows your turbo to work more efficiently, but also prevents heat soaking your FMIC (Front Mount Inter Cooler).

Im not trying to scare the crap out of you, as most likely, you arent having any bad issue right now. But its definitely worth investigating. Ill bring my laptop and stuff to the dyno day, if I make it, and we can pull your map and see if you are tuned or not

 

thanks for the info. Sorry I missed you at the dynoday...I was there early and hadn't seen your post.

Starting to wonder about the guy who put on these bolt ons. The best I can figure is he spent about $1,500 in intake, downtube and exaust mods and didn't get much for it. Why?

I dyno'd at 263, which isn't much above what they do stock. So they said I most likely wasn't tuned, and for a couple hours of tuning work I'd gain some significant hp from the mods, like 30-50. So surprised whoever owned it would spend so much on bolt ons and not spend the extra $400-600 for a tune that would bring the mods to life.

So I'm planning on getting it tuned...probably go back to torque freaks, since they're close and seem to know what they're doing.

 

$400 to $600 seems like an awful lot for a tune imho. Especially based on what you have. If you want the most bang for the buck, I would suggest giving Lucas, from English Racing, a call. I spent a great amount of time talking to him yesterday, and he is really nice to talk too, and really knows whats going on with the Evo software. Your other option would be to just get a base flash done by JEstr when he comes up here next weekend. I dont think the base flashes cost all that much, but you would have to check the JEstr tuning thread in this regional forum for certain.

 

I kindof thought that seemed like alot too. I'll try Lucas, see what he says. Thanks!