2014 Blue RS
Active member
No no it's cool seeing people willing to go out of their way to help. Awesome
Porting the Intake Manifold
- Thread starter Preloader
- Start date
I'm also willing to help out. Got all the needed Dremel stuff and tools on hand. I'm even further West in Chelsea though.
Typoed on my iPhone
Eric Smit
Enforcer
it's worth it and hardly noticeable.I'm still on the fence on this mod. It seems to make so much sense yet I dont want to take a torque hit in the low rpms.
I have an automatic, no tune.opcorn:
I'm still on the fence on this mod. It seems to make so much sense yet I dont want to take a torque hit in the low rpms.
I have an automatic, no tune.
Show me a dyno proving this "torque hit"
Typoed on my iPhone
So we are back doing some more Sonic development after catching up with some old projects and hiring some new help to cover the growth.
One of the things we have been wanting to test here for awhile is the removal of the air dams in the intake manifold. For those that are not familiar with them, there are some small air dams in the intake manifold that have a small hole in them. The thought is that they are there to introduce turbulence in the intake runners which will help with the atomization of fuel, a more homogenous mixture leading to better fuel economy.
We have received feedback from several people that have removed the intake manifold and removed these walls that seat of the pants "butt dyno" said that it made a difference, so we wanted to actually test it out on the dyno to see if there were any gains.
We bought an extra intake manifold for the testing so that we could still have a stock intake manifold for testing later and give us the chance to do A-B-A testing.
We started out installing the new intake manifold on the car to make sure both stock intake manifolds made the same power, which they did. We then modified one of the intake manifolds and drilled some extra holes in the air dam to see if there was any power difference. With the extra holes in the intake manifold, we picked up 4-5hp consistently which was more that we honestly were expecting.
We then installed the stock manifold back on the car and the car returned back to the stock hp.
Then the intake manifold with the 5 holes in the air dam had the air dams completely removed so that the intake runners were nice and smooth, and that modified intake manifold was installed. The HP increase was very noticeable, the graph below shows the car with a stock manifold (blue line) and the modified intake manifold (black line). The peak numbers increased by 14HP and 11 ft/lbs of torque, not bad for a mod that is free, just takes a little time to do. The gains all the way through the power band are impressive. Our fuel trims still look good on the car and we are testing what it has done to our fuel economy and will report back on that. We are expecting a hit on the fuel economy, but will gladly take it for the new increase in power.
All other mods on the car where not changed during any of the testing and consist of - DDMWorks Intake, DDMWorks prototype exhaust, tune.
As you can see, there is a tiny dip at 3000 rpm
That dip is imperceptible when actually driving. As I said show me a dyno chart with a low end torque hit, not a flat spot for 300 RPM.
Typoed on my iPhone
I see the flat spot, it's there for how long in the RPM range? I'm being generous when I say 300 RPMs.
It's also nearly identical to the stock torque curve. Which in my mind means it's not caused by porting the manifold.
Just buy some of that fancy Cruzetalk oil, it's the only mod you need.
*tongue firmly in cheek*
Typoed on my iPhone
Hulty
Site Supporter
For anyone on the fence about porting, do what I did, go online and buy a spare from a junked Cruze for $125. Port the Cruze and box up the Sonic one for zero warranty risk on catastrophic failure. Just means the car gets towed home prior to the tow to the dealer. On goes the manifold and downpipe, flash to stock and say really nicely, "car went boom, please I'll take another".
$125 is about the cheapest peace of mind you'll get in the business of big boy toys!!
$125 is about the cheapest peace of mind you'll get in the business of big boy toys!!
ScarabEpic22
Member
Hmmm...
This minor TQ hit is hardly noticeable during normal driving, and believe me the extra hp/tq above 4k makes it worth it. Pulls so much harder in the upper rev range vs stock.
2014 Blue RS
Active member
Torque hit smorque hit. My mpg's took a dump. Less than 20 mpg around town. I don't drive much and don't care but it's the fact of the matter. Don't mess with your car if you're second guessing doing anything to your car.
Wooksquatch
Member
Are you running e85? I wouldn't expect much more than 20mpg on corn. With all the ported manis and minimal changes to mpg I would say your results are uncommon.
2014 Blue RS
Active member
91 all the way. Only 4500 miles so I'm hoping it's still in a break in period. I can still get 36 on the freeway but around town it's 20 tops.
2014 Blue RS
Active member
Maybe this will improve with my tune. Waiting for an update from Trifecta as the original tune file had my car stuttering if i accelerate to hard. We'll see
Quick question, why are you running upgraded injectors for 91 Octane?
If you look in the ported Intake MPG thread I've done significant mileage logging with my car, with normal driving I'm regularly between 37 and 39 MPGs, with "Eco mode" I'm near 40 MPGs/tank.
My driving is 99.5% freeway, so maybe that's the difference?
Eric Smit
Enforcer
that's really low MPG for all freeway. slow down.