Third Party Testing: Crawford Billet Power Blocks (BPB / Manifold Spacers)
 

Hey guys!

So I had talked to crawford after they had posted on facebook showing gains with their intake manifold spacers and I had "called them out" on their claims. Shortly after the owner actually contacted me and told me he would send me a set at a heavily discounted cost and told me to try them out my self and prove him wrong. I like it when a company directly tells me to prove them wrong. Just to keep things clear I asked if Crawford would like the results back before posting to see if they wanted to make any additional tweaks in the event they wanted to further refine, but made it clear that I would be posting regardless good or bad. However Quirt told me nope, test them how they sit and just email him the dynos so he can see them and post if they are good or bad regardless and that he feels that they will do just fine. This sounded like they were A) Naive, or B) Quite confident. This was all dsicussed before I purchased them, and we were both on the same page that nothing was going to be thrown under the rug.

However after the testing today I am actually quite happy with the product. They did exactly as claimed, I saw the exact same results they did (within reason) and after doing some tuning the gains didn't dimminish.

Before moving on I want to make it clear that I did run out of time on the dyno as the install took longer than I had expected so I really only had 2-3 revisions on the tune and I know there is still more power on the table and as I was paying out of pocket for the dyno time and the car was being borrowed from a local its hard to justify forking a ton of cash out on something that I wont be using, once I saw the gains were real we started to clean up as the owner of the car was coming back for a full on tune with a header in the next few weeks so I felt that just simply finding out if the product was real was more important than finding out the exact limit of what they would give.

So lets start off with some small dynos. I forgot to plot the OEM AFR without the blocks but I can post the logs or overlay the logs for visual charting later this evening and have limited time to post this!

Testing Enviroment
The testing was done on a MAHA dyno. This dyno read incredibly low but is incredibly consistent. it is very common for stock cars to dyno 125-135WHP on this dyno. However I wanted to use it as I like this specific dyno for tuning reasons and even though it reads low the % difference is really what matters. So dont go rambling into the next thread saying "Oh they only made xxHP" because if I did thsi on a dyno jet you would get people rambling the exact opposite saying they made way more power than they actually will show on average for other dynos.

Most of the dynos were plotted in a way that gave 5HP / 5WTQ blocks. This squishes the dyno but makes it easier to read how much gain / loss per region. The final dyno was stretched to give a proper view of actual gains / losses.

All dynos are plotted using SAE J1349 corrections to compensate for the temperature throughout the day. The car was removed for install in the event the dyno was going to be needed however it was not touched, and we did not re-calibrate the rollers. So the event of having the HP skewed / tq shifted due to invalid calibration is not possible. This happens more than you think with dynos, if you sift through plots with people making low / high numbers and notice their max RPM you will see what I am talking about.

Baseline Testing
Now what I do for baseline testing is take the factory rom. I then open the rom and set the cam tables for low & high detonation to the same value. This will force them to stay consistent in the event of knock, or improper warm up. Our ECU has a number of timers and the ecu will use alternate cam profile maps depending on certain conditions. To keep things consistent run to run I put both maps identical to the higher powered one. This makes my gains typically lower than other peoples but I believe in proper data not bullshitted data. As I don't make money from doing this and I am doing it strictly to contribute to the community I could give less of a damn to make it look better than it really is. Not only that I disable the long term fuel trims for high load so that way during the actual dyno pull the fuel trims are deactivated and the ecu will run consistent from pull to pull. This rules out any "auto tune" that would cause the car to gain / lose power as we kept making pulls. I did this on both the tuned and untuned results to make sure things were consistent. The advanced multiplier was set to a 1.0 starting so full ignition advance was used right off the bat. 91 octane fuel from shell was used. I filled up shortly before the dyno to make sure the fuel was consistent.

Stock tune vs Stock tune + blocks
The stock car put down 130.2WHP at around 6500-6600RPM. The blocks put down 139.8 @ ~6550PM. So peak for peak we saw 9.8WHP, or 7.4% gain. The tq dip also saw noticeble gain averaging 2-5WTQ.

Lets compare this to crawford. They saw their largest gain @ 6359RPM. Their baseline was 187.88WHP (Corrected) and their post install was 206.11WHP. This is roughly 9.7%. Now I don't know what their testing method was but regardless of the fact I still saw a pretty substantial peak gain.I didn't verify my values at that exact rpm but I expect them to be at the 7.4-8.4% range which is still fairly close to their claims which to me says they weren't "fluffing" as much as people thought they may have been.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...B%20blocks.jpg

Edit: NVM found the plot of the baseline. You can see that the BPB actually ran Richer than the stock baseline by a hair. Typically false gains are given from running lean. This is a good sign.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...-BPB-Stock.jpg

Adding in tuned results
I tuned the stock car a bit on the street before the dyno the night before, and then did a few small tweaks in the dyno. The actual tuned + bpb is not as fine tuned and still has room to gain more throughout the power band. The gains in the lower RPM were shockingly close to my own tune up until high RPM and then it falls off considerably. As you can see with tuning nearly all of this fall off was removed and you were able to make very nice gains.

Lets look at the results @ 7300-7400RPM:
BPB w/o tune: ~116WHP
Stock: ~119WHP
Tuned: ~143WHP
Tuned with BPB: 140WHP

So untuned BPB vs Stock we were looking at ~2.5% loss. from the BPB
And once we re-tuned the car we netted ~ 140WHP.. This is ~ 20.7% gain from tuning @ 7,400RPM. I highly recommend getting a tune if you can afford it with this mod as it will really wake the car up at the top end post-tuning.

So pairing this mod + a tune really smooths it out quite a bit. I also know with further tweaking of the VVT I am confident i can get a hair more out at 6800+

Thick Solid: Tuned with BPB
Thin Solid: Untuned with BPB
Small Dashed: Tuned w/o BPB
Large Dashes: Untuned w/o BPB
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...ck-Testing.jpg

Completely stock vs BPB + Tuning
The car baselined at 130.2WHP @ 6560RPM vs tuned + BPB @ 148.6WHP @ 6720RPM. So the total max HP point gain was ~14.1%. The largest gain was at ~7300-7400RPM at ~[b]16.6%[b] total HP gain.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...-BPB-Tuned.jpg


Here is an alternate view of Stock vs Tuned vs BPB + Tuned to give you an idea of the gains / losses overall vs a stock car:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...tock-tuned.jpg

Closing Thoughts
Overall I am actually quite impressed with these. I almost wish they were a hair shorter to let me sustain the power band to redline but in reality the average gain due to their current height extension is actually quite wonderful. The average HP/TQ gain is quite impressive. Especially for untuned cars If someone isn't going to tune their car these gains are pretty much the best bang for the buck. Once you tune it the mid power band gains are not as substantial but it still adds up to giving a more balanced power band vs just all at a narrow RPM. After driving the car my self today and doing a quick tune I personally would use these on my own car if i wasn't FI, and would recommend them to people looking to get a more enjoyable NA experience. Just be careful when installing as you can easily drop something into the intake port of the engine. I wouldn't recommend this as a "first mod" if you have never held a wrench before. And it is also recommended to get an extra set of hands.

I felt the package came with everything nicely done, it wasn't smothered in logos or anything like that and looked subtle. You can barely tell they are installed. I will get some pictures during day light tomorrow to try to show you them installed but its really quite hard to see. The only thing I would say that I feel the kit needs is something for the rear block vent as the vacuum hose is a tad short for the reach and is stretched after install.

Also a big thanks to Crawford for taking the time to properly R&D this product. I can tell from the power gains that they must have spent some time dialing in the height and by just how much clearance you have for install it seems like this really wasn't a just "wing it" sort of deal.

Also I want to give a big thanks to Goodspeed Performance up in Scottsdale for lending me the dyno for the day. They don't typically operate the dyno on weekends and were just trying to help contribute to testing. They went out of their way to help and were in and out of the dyno room as they were busy working on cars but wanted to lend a hand to see if the product would really work and would just slip in to do a few pulls here and there between jobs. Thanks again!


Update: apparently there is a group buy going on over on Facebook ending April 4th: https://www.facebook.com/events/277229732435324/

Also the owner of the car is picking up a set of headers this week and will be back on the dyno for testing. So for those of you that were asking for paired headers with a catless header I will revise this post once I get it back on the dyno. Thanks @Lyzak for loaning me your car for the day!

Thanks Marin, you're the shit.

Awesome info, thanks for taking the time to do this. I wasn't sure if the power blocks were just snake oil or not

Thanks for the testing! Why wouldn't you use them on an FI car, though?

Awesome job @nelsmar

Theres a small typo though

Thick Solid: Tuned with BPB
Thin Solid: Tuned with BPB
Small Dashed: Tuned w/o BPB
Large Dashes: Untuned w/o BPB

Thin line should say Untuned

I'm gonna have to wait for oft tunes for this, but it's very exciting. Thanks @nelsmar.

So why not use them on a fi car?

sent from your mom

Thanks for testing. Which headers for that next round of testing?

Probably because the gains become negligible in a FI application.

Alright who's going to make these outta plastic and shit for 99.99

What is with this forum and people asking for cheap knock offs? It's like you want Tony from FA20club back.

@nelsmar

I know all this took quite a bit of your time...thanks for doing this

Glad to see Crawford back as well..:cheers:

@nelsmar I'd quote the issues I'm having reading your post but I'm on my phone and don't want to quote all of it or mess around.

Where is the 116 and 119whp coming from if stock is 130whp?

Some of your numbers don't make sense.

That's a whole lot of good work. Imo the.spacers are telling us the intake ports may be on the large side relative to cam profile. Anything that improves cylinder filling that much at lower rpms is taking advantage of a port, cam, timing compromise imo.

I prefer the word alternatives. Thia is a very simple part, not a turbo kit. Would you buy a trd sound changer tube for 100?

Very nice appreciate your time. These blocks, a good header and tune could equate 35-40 whp gains solid. That is a pretty impressive stroke of goodness really. :clap:

this may be incredibly off topic, by why do some dynos such as this one read so low (130whp) while others read real high (180whp)? Nelsmar is right in saying we should be looking at percentages, but what is right here? does the car have 140whp or 180whp? Why would we believe one or the other? why isn't this a standard calculation?

anyways.. looks great. thanks neslmar. where is jamesm when you need him for supportive context

Nice review. I'm glad you didn't take their word for it, and tested it for yourself!

Great work! Picking up a set as I was already on the fence.

Really great info thanks!

Well lets be honest here, the numbers regardless if they seem low are this. The baseline dyno shows a number that it started with and then shows what it ended up with. Regardless what those numbers are they are hard data and the gains are either there or arent.dynojet dyno's tend to read higher the a mustang or a maha dyno. My car on a mustang dyno makes roughly 255-260, put it on a dynojet and it will read 280-290. Maha dyno is known to read low so he is right in saying look at the percentages.

sent from your mom

Not at all as I think.

Look carefully at "@ 7300-7400RPM".

Ahhh reading comprehension is hard lol.....

Thanks for the info.

Thanks for the heads up! That could have been confusing. Lol

FI air flow is different as you have a positive pressure differential vs the engine pulling. It'd also just a lot of work to get solid data when you have sketching such as a turbo that has so many variables. If I was supercharged still I would give it a whirl to see what it was like.

The car I was testing on us picking up a JDL UEL this week.

Someone else answered you but just to clarify 130 was the "peak hp" of the baseline. I was showing examples of gains at a specific rpm as the peak number shows little. Especially when you consider both the tuned with and without the spacers made nearly the same peak whp but the dyno with the Crawford spacers has more torque and more usable power.

I have a link I will try to post in the morning explaining dynos. This is why baselines and average baseline numbers are very important. This is why there has been friction with me and many vendors in the past when asking for detailed dyno info because peak numbers without an appropriate baseline is hard to gather solid info from. A fee vendors have made as much effort as me to show baselines and it is quite appreciated by those of us that are comfortable with them.

But as for which is right... The maha is extremely accurate and does a wind down to get a crank power reading but regardless that is still only so accurate. Simple answer is none are right. Look at the gains not the actual number tins worthless.

Nice work. Little less gain than I expected on a tuned car. But as you said, great on a stock car.

In for header results to see if anything changes substantially.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

Great review, and we've gotta talk about how you're getting so much power up top on an otherwise stock car!

Holy hell, you beat me to it. Great results and especially impressive 16% with tuning. I won't waste the effort and time doing a bolt ons with tune. I'll go straight into installing it with my vortech. Stay tuned.

At redline

Perrin intake pipe and cold intake kit with the BPB could have good results

Another off topic, but I called up Crawford Performance and spoke with "Kelson" for additional information. He said pretty all of the above. Furthermore, there is a group buy going for the first 80-100 people (if the tier gets there) 20% off. Needless to say, this review really influenced me to make the purchase. Thank you.

It could, but you will never know until the combination is installed, and tuned. We are hitting that stage of modding where a new part will come out that changes a lot of things. The stock airbox is designed for the stock air intake and manifold. Once you modify the parts behind it, the effect of the intake changes as well. Who's to say a different intake won't yield more power than just a drop in after the intake runners.

Good thing I have the BPBs. On order then. Ecutek mapping will be added after

This may be a ridiculous question, but (assuming grimmspeed produces an intake that makes power) would the gains seen here negate the grimmspeed intake, or would they add together? I realize that if I add 2 parts worth 20hp each I won't net 40hp, but are the spacers optimized for the stock intake, or is the intake a completely separate system.

Sorry if this was worded halfassed, I'm a bit hungover.

Different dyno types (Mustang vs. Dynojet, etc., testing conditions (high temperature, humidity, heat, altitude), and the specific cars tested (automatic vs. manual - power/drivetrain losses) all have a profound effect on dyno results.

The key that has already been mentioned is to look at a change in results for the same car, on the same dyno, and in roughly the same conditions over several dyno runs.

great write up I am going to pick one of these up. Found this buy that ends friday!
https://www.facebook.com/events/277229732435324/

right and I understand all of that. but when someone says "break 200whp mark NA" ... well what does that really mean?

Not much. That dyno might read exceptionaly high. I pointed that out in one of those threads and the tuner got pretty but hurt at me for it, so I stopped. The real # is % gains over baseline. That's why lots of us want to see the baseline as a point of comparison.

Numbers can also be fudged from Dyno pull to Dyno pull. Third party numbers are always better than manufacturers.

I'd rather have them made from a lighter, heat insulating material. Not my fault Crawford chose poorly for their spacer material.

On a dyno that reads our cars around 175...assuming we actually have 200 at the crank and average losses. That is where breaking 200whp comes from but like Hawaiian mentioned every dyno is different and some cars are a little different.