The need for speed!

[Slim Shady]

If I've ever heard a leading question that is one:

do you?

[golfvr6]

As i said whatever works for you mate. Sports filters and induction kit don't work well on all cars. They do work well on gtis/vr6. It is a fact that drilling the box and putting in a filter will work as any engine works on breathing. The exhaust manifold on the 16v/vr6 is quite good as standard, the airbox is extremely restrictive. Typical gains are around 5%, not a lot but worth it for ?40.

[Slim Shady]

I was just curious to where you were leading with "Do I work on my car"?

3rd party air filters are less restrictive and increase airflow to a degree - poss the 5% you mentioned.

Induction kits are a bit of a mixed bag - like you correctly point out - they work for the older cars - but are useless on the majority of newer cars with fully computerised management systems (which merely recalulate the air/fuel ratio when extra air is admitted).

I can't really comment on a VR6 as I have never had/worked/modded on one.


They are a bit heavy so that is why I would retrofit a T rather than a V.

[reserves]

Is the general consensus that an K&N air filter is good value? I have a 1991 8v and I am having it serviced and thought I may as well add a K&N instead of the standard VW air filter.

Does anyone know the price of a K&N one (I can?t seem to find a price on the net) and also the rough price of a VW one?

I?m not worried about making my car sound better, I just want it to run better!

Thanks

R

[reserves]

Just found this, still not sure if I should buy a K&N!

http://www.pumaracing.co.uk/gentune.htm

AIR FILTERS
Pretty much the same story as with exhaust systems these days. On older cars with carburetors the air filter box was usually a round plastic thing with a tiny snorkel tube for the engine to breathe through. This silenced induction noise very nicely but also strangled the engine. The filter itself wasn't the problem, it was the box it sat in that caused the restriction. Throw the box away and fit a K&N and a good few bhp was easily found. On modern fuel injection engines the induction systems are much better designed because the manufacturers can't afford to waste any available power. In my experience the filters themselves, which are usually flat square items, cause no restriction at all as long as they are new and clean. Replacing them with a "high performance" filter does absolutely nothing for power output. There is sometimes a bit of power to be found by enlarging the inlet tube in the bottom of the filter box or drilling a couple of extra 1" holes in the box. It's usually only a couple of percent at most though and hardly enough to even be felt in terms of extra performance.

The performance systems which replace the entire standard filter box with a tube and cone type filter achieve much the same thing as drilling a couple of holes in the standard box but for lots more money. You are unlikely to see more than a couple of percent extra power from these and very often they upset the standard fueling so much that power and economy in fact drop. To get any gain it's often necessary to spend even more money on a rolling road session to get the fuel mixture tinkered around with to restore it to optimum and often this is only partially successful and you end up with poor starting, shunting and stalling in traffic and other irritating habits if it isn't done right. Copyright David Baker and Puma Race Engines

Once again beware of magazine tests where the standard filter element isn't a brand new one in a back to back test or the results will be meaningless.

[golfvr6]

That is just another opinion, there seems to many on this subject. From my experience on my vr6, the induction works well, on fully electronic systems it will work better as the ecu will automatically adjust the mixture.

[golfvr6]

Slim, i was just curious if you are a hands on or not  

[Slim Shady]

I have been known to get my hands oily.

 

Do you?



"they upset the standard fueling so much that power and economy in fact drop"

What I suspected -  

[Slim Shady]

Whatever works for you mate! i do wonder where you get your info from.

Common sense chief - I just noticed your impertinent remark.

Where do you GET your info from? Back of a Ripspeed catalogue?
 

[nickm]

ladies ladies! vw's are crap