xluben's FogTurbo Bugeye

8 minute(s) of a 297 minute read

I tried on the intakes last night. Didn't get anywhere testing them though. 

3-27-2015

New rig shot from tonight.

3-28-2015

Here are the results from my intake filter testing.

I tested the following setups tonight:

• (KN) - K&N RC-4480 - http://www.knfilters.com/search/prod...x?prod=rc-4480
• (TG SV) - Turbo-Guard SV - http://turbo-guard.com/turbo-guard-sv/
• (Cone 6") - Speed Daddy 6" High - http://www.ebay.com/itm/400759582227?item=400759582227
• (Cone 3") - Speed Daddy 3" High - http://www.ebay.com/itm/191287565901?item=191287565901

The car is a 2002 WRX with a built 2.5L motor and 2012 STI 6MT. It is running a PTE 6266 Gen 1 in a fog light mounted location with an open exhaust dump out the fender. This is the same tune that I previously posted results for. It was a little colder tonight so both boost and power were slightly up from previous charts. The car is running a manual boostcontroller and the setting was not changed at all. It was simply swapping filters.

Here are the results in Virtual Dyno:

Everything was kept as consistent as possible between runs (ie. back to back runs, same night, same tune, exact same location, etc), but road logs can always have variation. Even with that being said, I think it's clear that the Turbo Guard SV just does not flow as well as a pleated filter. Boost is down significantly. Midrange power and torque is actually pretty good, but the top end is close to 10% lower. The subsequent charts on time and IDC back this up as well.

I think this is to be expected. The surface area is nearly an order of magnitude smaller than the others and the filtermedia is as dense (or possibly more dense) than the others. This filter really only makes sense when space is the #1 requirement, but you still want good protection. If you had a forward facing turbo that was directly behind your grill, or if I was dead set on running a fog light cover, then this would be the way to go (at the expense of top end power).

The other 3 filter options all performed fairly similarly. Boost was similar, and torque/power are within what I would consider to be the measurement variation of Virtual Dyno pulls. It does appear that the K&N might be flowing slightly worse, but it's really had to conclude that for sure. The same could be said for the extra torque with the largest filter. It's a bit higher, but not by a huge margin, and the top end is very similar to the others.

The other two comparisons I did were 3k-7.5k time and max IDC. The results from these runs back up the Virtual Dyno results. The Turbo Guard SV is the obvious outlier. The others are all close enough that I don't think I could conclude one to be better than the other with a high level of confidence. A few pulls on an actual dyno might be able to better sort this out, but for my uses I think I would be fine with any of them.

Plot of RPM vs time from 3k to 7.5k:

Bar chart of the 3k to 7.5k times:

Bar chart of max IDC for each option:

I am still looking forward to trying out the Turbo Guard Screen as well as the Treadstone velocity stack with open inlet. These are what I would consider running for at the track. I am hoping the open velocity stack will be a solid bump up from any of these filtered options that would be for street use. I will probably do this testing later on once I have more time.

The 04 STI BBS wheels are gone, and in their place is a set of black 17x9" +45 Enkei RPF1's with 255/40R17 Federal 595 RS-R's. Unfortunately I haven't been able to drive the car yet because the rear tires rub on the struts. I have ordered a set of 5mm spacers to help them clear.

The fronts look like they're poking a little, but it looks like camber is close to 0. If I dial in a degree or two of negative camber I think they should be fine. I think I may end up having to roll the rear once the spacers go on. Possibly the front too, but it might clear. I'm happy to be on a wider set of tires. Hopefully the weather warms up soon!

3-31-2015

I did a few quick 50-100mph pulls tonight and the cam timing change seems like a decent improvement over the 3.9sec range that I had been running.

50-100mph:
Pull #1: 3.65 sec
Pull #2: 3.74 sec
Pull #3: 3.67 sec

Here's a photo of the car from yesterday afternoon (stock wheels back on):

4-1-2015

Put on 5mm universal spacers yesterday. The inside of the tire clears the strut by a few mm's now. The tires rub on the fenderson big bumps though, so I will definitely have to do a fender roll.

4-6-2015

I picked up some eBay center caps ($30 vs. $100+ for the Enkei RPF1 version) as well as hubcentric adapter rings, spline drive lugs, and black aluminum valve stem covers. Here's a shot of the center caps. I'm happy with them. Similar build to the real Enkei ones that I've had before

I rolled the rear fenders last night. I didn't have time to do the fronts yet, so I'm still not driving on the RPF1's. I think with the roll they should clear OK, but I'm still waiting to find out. Right now I have RPF1's in the back and stock wheels in the front. Haha. Not driving it of course. Just waiting for me to have time to roll the front.

Over the weekend Fuji and I played with the cam timing a little bit more. Over the summer we switched the intake cam to be one tooth advanced to get some more mid range. Last week we put it back to normal and the top end bumped up a little (as well as shifted the powerband right). The top end was still dropping off hard though, so we moved the intake and exhaust cams 1 tooth more retarded.

After the most recent change the powerband shifted again to the right a few hundred RPM's. Peak numbers are about the same, but up at redline there are huge gains. The power doesn't drop off nearly as much. Compared to when I had the timing advanced it is close to 100WHP more at redline (even with boost slightly lower up top). The peak torque isn't as high but for drag use this new powerband should be better due to the top end power.

Drag Setup (15x7" +35 with 26x8.5" Slicks):