This thread is pretty ugly, BUT I'm always down for some intake talk:
Lately when I cruise through these forums I read in pretty much every intake thread that you should just buy a drop in filter and call it a day, and that intakes are worthless. It's very short-sighted unfortunately.
During development we posted literally everything, including a study on the stock intake system, and pressure differentials across all parts of it. Lots of really really cool info, which showed us where we could make improvements. We also posted a 48 page thread, where we showed off tons and tons of dyno charts from our "141 pull, 61 miles at WOT, 23 intake configurations in a single day," dyno day (
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50492). It's a pretty long read, but there is all kinds of relevant info in there including stock runs, drop in filter, silicone elbow, modified snorkel, a few different brand intakes, prototypes, etc.
Now at some point people started to say, hey the horsepower per dollar of an intake isn't that great compared to a drop in filter. And that's true if you look only at the peak HP numbers. Even if you're looking at total power under the curve, it's not worth it to some people, and that's just fine. But lately the automatic response to any intake question on this forum is: Don't buy an intake, just get a drop in filter, it's way cheaper and almost as good!
This is why it's not almost as good:
What you're looking at here as far as runs go (in order) is: 1. Stock 2. Drop In Filter 3. Drop in Filter and Silicone Elbow 4. GrimmSpeed Prototype intake.
Before anyone comments on how low the horsepower numbers are, remember that this is a Dyno Dynamics dyno, which reads around 75%-80% of what a Dynojet reads. This applies to the deltas as well.
So this is still when we were using our prototype intake and airbox, which was not as refined as the production version. You'll see it's making the same peak horsepower as the drop in filter and silicone elbow, but it makes more power literally everywhere, and sooner too. Granted its only a few horsepower here and a few ftlbs of torque there...
But it's not a fair comparison: Look how LEAN the drop in filter runs are. 14:1? That's wildly unacceptable at WOT. While our intake (untuned) is making more power, and at a safe, stock air to fuel ratio. Over time once the ECU starts pulling timing due to knock, that drop in filter isn't going to be making the same power.
So you'd want to get it tuned. And all of the sudden that drop in filter is a lot more expensive... Those drop in filter dyno comparisons are pretty cool and very consistent, but they also do not show the AFRs.
Also, just to reiterate once we took the production version (not the prototype) to a dynojet it made 10whp, which is double what a drop in filter makes. This is also where we learned that we were not putting the air filter on the correct distance on the intake tube, and were hampering our own power production. Once we figured that out, we immediately made the power we did:
So at the end of the day, yes our intake has proven itself. And it is a great candidate for a lot of people. Do you want something that looks better under the hood, requires absolutely no tune (even has a MAF-scaled OFT tune available if you want to make even more power), and sounds better? Then our intake is a great choice. However, if you want to just make some power, don't care about running leaner at WOT, like the look of the stock intake, and don't want to spend as much money, then a drop in filter is what you're probably looking for.
Chase
Engineering