I'm not going to cover much of the same ground that's been shared/debated ad nauseam on the forum already. I'm also not a strong believer of intakes on our cars as I rank quality filtration highly and many of the offerings have compromises.

So...with the R2C, I bought a set used out of curiosity. Installed them today and wanted to share a few notes.

The most important interface is the elbow portion of the intake as it mates to the throttle body. Get it off and you could cost yourself 5hp easily. With that in mind, I installed the intakes with that as a priority.

The OEM cold air inlets for the OEM airboxes sit fairly low in relation to where the R2C "airboxes" sit. If I were to do a redesign, I'd make them a bit deeper.

Sealing around the airbag is suspect at best. I added door/garage strip sealer in appropriate places. It's super malleable and conforms well to odd shapes, open celled so it'll expand and collapse as needed, and it has a sticky back. You can double it up to add thickness. I bought it at Home Depot and it's made by Frost king. I actually use it mostly for my guitar pickups. I do a lot of direct mounting of pickups with wood inserts and machine screws and I keep them level with this foam. Works like a charm.

I did additional sealing around the top of the airbox and around the radiator hose on the passenger's side. I tried to get them as low as possible to have a more direct line of cool air from the stock cold air intake tubes instead of half of it flowing past the underside of the R2C.

One area of concern is on the passenger's side. The valve cover breather hose touches the fuel pressure regulator vacuum line. If I were to keep this intake long term, i'd either shorten the metal elbow coming off the R2C tube or see if I could locate silicon hosing with an elbow. I'd also install some sort of shielding or another larger hose over the FPR vacuum line. I'll watch it closely over the coming week.

I went for a quick ride and yep, they sound awesome. Can't tell if there's much, if any, hp difference but acceleration seems a bit smoother and it does seem to pull a bit harder on top. It sure as hell didn't make the car slow. I'll have OBDII bluetooth dongle here tomorrow and I can monitor IAT's. It's summer here and we may have our first 100 degree day later in the week.

I have a Nismo R-tune intake coming the end of the week and that'll be installed early next week.

Pics to come.

 

damn u do this for fun?

 

tYes.

 

Lets seem some pics? also what obd2 reader did you go with and what app do you plan on using?

 

BUSY day sorry! Went with the LElink bluetooth connector and will be using two different programs, Blue Driver and OBD Fusion.

Stopped by a local speed shop called Black Jack, owned by Spurs player Tim Duncan, and a mile from my house, to schedule an alignment. Saw THIS there. was amazing in person....



They had a few high end Audi R8's, a Diablo in the back and who knows what else....

Anyway, on to the intake.

Installed!



I know the extra sealer looks a bit wonky but all I care is that it works and helps seal the boxes. Air will always be drawn in by the path of least resistance and I'm hoping there's a bit of ram air thing going on with the OEM cold air ducts. WHY R2C didn't just map out the stock airbox and go from there...

Here's where the two hoses, fuel pressure regulator and the valve cover vent, touch. Not good. Like I said, I'll watch it closely.


A bit hard to tell here but the cold air inlet on the top of the photo...the bottom edge comes in below the bottom of the R2C intake. I tried reversing the side bracket which determines the R2C box's height but it cause too much of an alignment issue with the throttle body.

 

Did I mention the intake sound is to die for? Really good...

I did a bunch of stop and go, errand type stuff and I don't believe I experienced any sort of heat soak issues. With that said, the temps here were in the mid 90's with a few 100 degree days on the way. I'm more likely seeing that than heat soak due to the design. When it's this hot and the A/C is cranked, yeah, your car gets a bit slower.

 

Looking good! Cost to butt dyno what do you think? Also what size are the filters on the R2C kit?

 

Acceleration felt smoother. I still suffer from traction issues despite the extra heat, in the lowest three gears. Seems to pull more quickly to redline and a bit harder from 5K on up. Can't say it's a huge difference as the temps just took a turn north around here. Hoping, praying, the Nismo intake retains some of the intake growl I get with these puppies.

They use the 10509B filter, these are the dimensions in inches...
CO10509B
Outlet 2.5
Open End 5.75
Closed end 4.5
Media 5.38
Flange 1.31
Overall (length) 6.69

Ideally, the boxes should be bigger and give more clearance between it and the sides of the filter. I took a look at where the Nismo filters will go and it's a pretty large void.

 

Great review ApeFactory. Once again an amazing job with one of your threads!

 

Got the OBDII bluetooth link last night and got everything to work. I'll datalog IAT's vs. ambient today on my way to work. I think there's a way to output the data or at the very least, do a screen grab. Not sure it'll "record" for 20 minutes, but we'll see!

The LeLink was easy to set up and it works with a few different programs. The programs I bought will read and clear codes as well as read every sensor on your G. Good stuff!

 

Coolio!

I've been doing something similar over the last few days.

While waiting for my R2C to finally ship (if they ever do) I've been base-lining my OEM intakes to understand the intake temperature variation patterns.

I'm using a generic WiFi OBD dongle with my iPhone and the DashCommand app.

The data-logging feature in DC is really-really-REALLY comprehensive. Pretty much loggs every PID available and dumps it into a CSV file which I email to myself and then manipulate in Excel.


For an 1-hour+ commute I get about 20MB worth of data logging for each session. Fortunately they shrink down to 6MB in CSVs.

Meanwhile I've been monitoring it live during my daily commute to and from work. I've noticed some interesting things. The commute is mostly highway in the morning and all back roads on the way home in the evening. Some mornings have been in heavy stop-n-go traffic, and some back roads have been flowy uninterrupted driving...so it's all conditions.

I've noticed, for example, the general intake temp difference is +6-10 deg over ambient...while driving...with some light accel.

While stopped at a long light, after being in traffic, it can jump +18-20 degs.

These deltas do not seem to change with different ambient temperatures.
(60 vs 80 degrees ambient.)


Particularly interesting is that the intake temp immediately jumps +2-4 degs if you take your foot of the gas pedal and coast...regardless of the speed. (Highway or back road) So throttle position definitely affects intake temperature even on OEM intakes. But not significantly in my book.

I also did some cocktail-napkin-style calculations regarding CFM rates vs. tube length to get the amt of time a particular volume of air remains in the mid-tube to determine if the mid-pipes have the opportunity to transfer heat into the intake stream. (not eff'in likely 'mate)

I'm looking forward to when I install my R2C so I can capture comparative data and answer for myself if heat soak is actually an issue.

It will be interesting to see if the temperature differential exceeds day/night or seasonal temperature difference...because so far my car does not seem faster in January than it is in June.

 

I do notice a change going from January to June here but we're going from 50's to the high 90's. It isn't much as I still manage to spin the rear tires in three gears. Hoping my impending alignment will cure some of that.

Anyway...while driving, there's no chance the mid pipes leading to the throttle bodies really heat up the air as there's laminar flow and there's a boundary layer which exists along the walls of the tubes. It actually insulates to a degree but again, as you've noted the air is moving so fast, a particle of air probably takes a few milliseconds to go from the exit of the filter to the entrance of the throttle body with the car at speed.

I am also going to monitor my oil and coolant temps this summer. Thinking of adding a larger radiator and external oil cooler for more consistency and peace of mind. And a lighter wallet.

High flow cats are next after the Nismo intake goes on.

 

That NISMO intake is Psick!

Are you sure the seasonal wheelspin differences aren't due to tire temp rather than intake temp?

 

PV=nRT
Lowering the pressure reduces the temperature. And Bernoulli's Theorem tells us why the pressure drops.

Its nice to see someone apply knowledge to the problem. Chemical engineers know this as resonance time, the time a given slug of liquid (air is a liquid) spends traveling through a "reactor".

 

Being an Electrical Engineer, I will reluctantly admit to failing more chemistry classes than I took.(do the math on that)
But I do still have Boyles law etched on the inside of my eyelids. (Cough Physics cough)

I'll check for an intake pressure PID on the drive home to see if the very slight throttle difference between maintaining speed and pure coasting actually generates enough pressure change to raise the intake temp 2-4 degrees.

It seems unlikely because the temp does not vary any further at additional throttle positions.

But it's interesting as heck.

Btw, temp increases with pressure so if dropping Throttle to coast, the pressure should drop, so that does not correspond to an increase in temp.