Sure is! We are all set to launch the '16 pre-sale on Tuesday. Links and threads will be posted here on the forums.
Sorry to hear you are not pleased with our final design. The design of our intake systems are impacted by numerous factors. Our goal is to provide a product with great value, affordability, and optimal performance. In this system, air is drawn through the factory duct and then passes through our appropriately sized cone filter before passing through the intake piping to the turbocharger. We are using a silicone turbo inlet hose to prevent heat transfer to the pipe. Utilizing a plastic airbox and/or intake pipe was not plausible with our particular goals for this system. We did experiment with a ventilated airbox setup on this vehicle and found no appreciable difference with intake temperatures.
Horsepower gains can be a challenge to produce on modern engine designs. Factory intake setups are becoming more efficient and ECU limitations have impacted output gains on recent projects. That being said, we saw consistent power gains from 4,000 rpm through redline with this kit. This, along with the improved sound, provides solid reasoning for this kit being a nice upgrade.
-John
John,
Thank you for your feedback. Its not that its not pretty. But when a company like yours puts forth a set of goals to accomplish with a project, as a company you have two directions you can go, the quick and east to get a product to market so that you can have a share of the pie, or you can be a little late to the party with something that is exceptional. The market in which you play is a $36 billion a year market and what your telling me is the best available is a metal box, with a metal tube? What I am looking for is outside of the box design. Something that takes the space given and delivers a product not just to sell, but a product that delivers. While the other person who commented on my out of expectation comments said "why don't I design one myself", give me a $250,000 budget and I will. If you are releasing a product which is no different than what everyone else has released, then from your CEO's point of view you really need to be the name in the field to get people to look your way. Is that the case? Is that the case with Ford and your product? Don't misunderstand me, I am not sticking up for any other company here. They are all just as guilty.
Let me share something with you, so when I decided to buy all of this bolt on upgrade stuff for my car, I opted for the MAPERFORMANCE stuff. While COBB has a really nice long history making HP on vehicles. MAP has a larger history and manufacturers everything in house. Having been a manufacturer myself of performance clutches for big V8 cars, I understand the process. But as I was getting ready to throw down my money, in another post here, MAP did the same thing you did, and shared their R&D process for building an CAI. Their research showed that the best location for the best gains had this pipe with exposed filter hanging down just below where the factory box used to be. They did dyno test and came to the exact same numbers you did, as well as all of the other companies out there. The difference here, is the salesman at MAP told me that the factory air box was a good design and the gains were not justified by the upgrade under 300hp. He saved me some money and theirs is less expensive than yours. The point being, he didn't try to sell me something that I didn't need just because they had something to sell.
So back to what I originally threw out you, let me give you some suggestions.
Imagine, you cut the car on, and the intake is bringing in air at one temp, you flip a switch and low and behold the intake temps drop 30 degrees instantly.
Imagine you have air running through your intercooler, and you flip a switch and the temp on the cold side of the intake is 30 degrees or lower than what it would have been without the modification?
A company called C02 released a product that blows C02 across the fins of the intake to cool it down. The problem with this design is it is temporary and is limited to what is in the bottle. They do a similar setup with a air intake pipe.
You almost could take A/C lines and run a sign wave pattern in front of the intercooler with the cold side of the AC system so when air blows across the fins it would be blowing against the ac lines, but that would block some of the air.
You could run AC lines in and out of the intercooler, so it would be cold all the time.
But what if, there was something attached to the intercooler and maybe even the charge pipe, and the air intake that was electronic, that could be attached to the piping and the intercooler that would cool the inside of the pipe?
In the air intake pipe you would need fins, like you would find in a cardboard box that has dividers for bottles. But these fins are paper thin and aluminum like a tick tack toe grid, but attached to the outside walls. So, they do not interfere, block or reduce airflow, but when the outside of the pipe is cooled, the fins become cold, and as air passes over them, they air gets colder.
For the charge pipe, same fin design, but either have heat sinks on the outside of the piping in a manner that would fit in the car, or, back to our electronic devices that cool the surface or both.
As for the FMIC, we have two really flay surfaces on top and bottom to attach our electronic devices to cause the intercooler to become cold that in combination with maybe having fans mounted behind the intercooler to force draw air through the cooler.
Lets look outside the box one more time, what about a double walled tube that in-between is filled with sodium to help keep it cool? Or just a double walled tube that has an air gap?
A 5hp gain is not enough. I could make that gain from modifying the tune. The premise is to reduce boost to make power, not increase it. I know your not following all of the post, but boost is measure of restriction. The more boost I have to use to generate power, the less efficient the motor becomes an the more unnecessary heat is generated. If I can increase air flow at a lower temp, without increasing boost, then I have increased the efficiency of my motor.
In your eyes, If there is a market for a $250-450 air intake that replaces the factory air box, and replaces the factory plastic tubing with an aluminum pipe, or silicone pipe for a gain of 5 hp, then there a market for piping that using electronics drops the air temp 30 degrees.
I am asking you to reinvent the wheel or in this case a better way to control the temp of the air coming into the car and the air moving around the turbo and back into the engine. Don't just be another company with a CAI like everyone elses.
Thank you for your time
Bryan
