How can you tell (in datalog for example) if the turbos are "starving" for air and need the larger inlet pipes or fenderwell? At what power level does that tend to happen on a 997tt?

 

I guess that's the point I was trying to make. It's not really an assumption that the fenderwell design is sub-optimal. In fact, as a side-note, calling it sub-optimal isn't really fair...because for those turbos, it IS optimal, because it's the only way. But you simply can't deny the fact that a GT30 turbo at 20psi isn't robbing air from the intercooler. An even bigger turbo would have even more negative impact. How much air is it stealing and what negative effect is it having on performance....well there's just no way to tell because it HAS to be there in that type of turbo setup. Remember, an intercooler not only effect initial performance, but the reason we all choose good intercoolers is because the insure repeatability of performance. I don't think anyone could disagree that it definitely effects the repeatability of performance in those setups.

As for our "pop" factor....well, if you're gonna spend tons of time and money engineering and designing something...why not make the finished product look hot too.

 

The "pop" factor was meant as a compliment. It looks very nice. I could have said "bling" factor.

What do you mean by repeatability? As for robbing air from the IC, do you know for a fact there is only so much air to go around such that this will have a negative impact? Or is this more speculation?

 

Bling works too

When I say repeatability, this is what I mean. OK...so your car is nice and cold, you just took it out for the day, and cruised some backroads to the highway. Your intercoolers are still nice n cool because the turbos are just reaching operating temp. You get on the highway and punch the gas...those intercoolers just got nice 'n hot because of the hot air coming out of the turbos flowing through them. But they did a good job of providing cool IAT's because they physically were still cool. This is when you need the flow of air coming into the intercooler ducts to effectively cool the intercooler enough so that next time you hit the gas you're starting with the same advantage. If the air can't reach the intercooler, it becomes heat soaked, your IAT's will gradually rise with every "pull" you do, and obviously then performance will decrease.

At one point, believe it or not we did take measurements of the factory intercooler ducting pre-intercooler using our digitizing arm. We used that to model the CFM of air coming into the coolers at various speeds of driving. This was done during the design phase of our intercoolers and turbos. To be perfectly honest though, that's just not info I can post or share because it took some awesome engineering and a lot of time to do. It would be pretty valuable to other tuners. Once we had that info, we determined that a GT style turbo would demand too much of the limited amount of air that the ducting could provide. This is one of the fundamental reasons why we chose to pursue a VTG-based package rather then the GT's.

Before I started working here, I would have never imagined the lengths gone to in order to engineer every single part that comes out of this place. But believe me....no stone is ever left unturned.

 

I'm not sure you can in an absolute sense. If you had enough data you could probably look at the slope of the maf vs rpm curve for various systems and make some determination but even then I think there would be too many variables in play. The best way would be to swap out your intake pipes (which pretty much suck) and replace them with something better and see if your tq hits earlier. If it does, then you know you've been sucking through a straw that was too narrow.

 

the fender well intakes work better then the regular hard piping replacement. much less restrictive and much less travel.

they state the fact that they block the ic , well theres shields on the side to block air in, and also its not like the ic is completetly blocked by like a bumper or something ese the filter sits up from the ic and the air can go right around it.

to me even though it may not be, looks like champion wast trying to play down the proto setup and promote their inatke setup.. the whole... if you can avoid that set up i would comment was a bit shady.

 

Not at all. In fact I never mentioned Proto at all...just the fenderwell type intake which many other tuners use.

I also mentioned that comparing those setups to ours is apples to oranges...a fair comparison simply can't be made. Check all my comments again...

All I said was that our cars, with less power, are performing better then most GT30 type setups. I, in no way, intended to take a jab at any other tuner. Am I not allowed to brag every once in a while?

 

Well, I really don't know what it would take to heat soak one of these set-ups and under what conditions. Maybe The Boggster can install a fenderwell set-up and let us all know.

It's great to see that you guys do so much research. Can you tell me this, if a turbo is flowing 35-50 lbs/min, you mean to say that there would not be not enough air flowing into the ducts to handle the turbo and IC requirements with a fenderwell intake? What do you think it would take to heat soak one of these fenderwell set-ups with a vtg vs hard piping like yours? Did you even try a fenderwell set-up and compare it to your current system?

 

Not saying that there won't be enough air at all, but we determined that the turbo uses enough to make a difference.

It's hard to say how a VTG setup would react to a fenderwell type intake, because to be honest, we never tried it. To be honest, I'd say that after 2 or 3 pulls, the intercoolers in this type of setup would start to lose performance and increase IAT's. Once we got to a certain point with research, we made the decision to stay VTG-based.

 

The OP posted an interesting question whether anyone has tried a fenderwell set up with upgraded vtgs. I think it could make a difference, at least worth testing. Would it be better than aftermarket OEM style system? I think that question is still up for grabs.

 

Got one for GT30's This could be adapted to work with VTG's no problem. If you want to try, let me know. Since the turbo has the BRV built in, you wont have the crazy long red hose to the BOV like in the 2nd pic.

 

That looks nice and slick, easy install, no motor drop? Any issues with heat soak with gt30s?

 

No heat soak issues that I have experienced. These do sit above the intercoolers as pictured below. I have the stock VTG pipes here. To work on a VTG, we can either do a carbon adapter or simply someone could cut the black plastic stock pipe and coupler to it. We can make a full carbon fiber intake pipe. Maybe I will get that done. If someone wants to be the tester, let me know. Will be alot cheaper then you think....



The ducts are cut and modified so the air flow is still directed where it needs to be

 

If I wasn't already getting stuff done, I would jump on this.

 

When I did our first version of our turbo kit, we kept the stock intake box so we had aluminum intake pipe which we used in place of the black plastic since we were still running GT30's. This is some raw prototyping...









Then we switched to the fender mount which gave us more room for the full 3 inch Ypipe up top. So I guess we could make for VTG carbon fiber intake pipes for stock or fender intakes... in fact I am going to go put my hands on those old parts now. I bet at $1000 there would be some hungry wolfs We build some nice CF stuff here. These are GTR intercooler pipes we just did -