OK, so I bought one of these kits to see what kind of problems you guys are having, and to satisfy my own curiosity
The amount of chopping and filing I had to do to get this thing to fit was hilarious
It really is an embarrassingly poor piece of Mickey mouse engineering. Let's run through the issues one by one:
1) Not an issue with the intake itself, but for some reason there is was a MK7 R600 silicon pipe in my box. Why that was there, I have no idea!
2) The MAF sensor literally didn't fit in the intake pipe. I had to file out the hole for clearance
3) Once I'd done that and the sensor fitted through the hole, the weather seal wasn't pulled down by the screws, double
I kid you not, I had to file the profile of the MAF into the intake pipe to get it to seal properly, otherwise sh1t loads of unmetered air would have leaked past the loose seal. You can probably see signs of my handy work here......
4) Then I had to trim ~10mm off the N80 valve's hose, otherwise big rubbage! Could probably do with a bit more trimming off but as it stands now, there is no tension on the plastic elbow thingy.
5) And then of course, the famous coolant elbow issue. Firstly I released the clamp on the rad top hose and clocked it round a bit to relieve the tension off the bottom of the canister (yet another bit of shonkiness). This gave a 'little' more clearance for the fragile Tee off, but the only way I could get enough room for that was to not fit the air scoop on the grille.
This is as good as I could get it. Approx 15mm clearance.
6) The aforementioned deleted grille scoop. Without doing this, the canister rubs on the Tee off permanently. Enough engine rocking will snap it off in time. I also had to trim the grille scoop to get that to fit properly as well
7) The silly noises it makes
OMG tt sounds ridiculous, like a dirty phone caller breathing heavily down a drain pipe
Maybe if I was 15 years younger I'd appreciate it, but people with open intakes?!? WTF, how the hell do you put up with it? It's embarrassing
When I saw all this sh1t, I felt like chucking it back in the box and sending it back, but I'd already cut the DV return elbow into the TIP and made other marks on the kit trial fitting it. Plus the thought of having to explain all these problems to someone on the phone filled me with a due sense of exhaustion and dread, so I persevered with it and got it in.
I will revisit this with some choice modifications to make it fit PROPERLY, but for now, it's functional and isn't going to snap that hose off
So, ignoring all that shoddiness for a moment.... as an intake, does it actually work? I must concede.....hell yeah, it does
Immediately noticeable improvements. Sharper throttle response everywhere and kicks harder in boost. Top end fees a bit more eager too.
Had I known fitment would be THAT bad prior to buying it, and given the weird and embarrassing noises, would I still buy it? Absolutely not. It's tragically bad and VWR should be ashamed of themselves for releasing such a poorly developed product onto the market. Remember, this is a
£450 intake!!
Maybe I got a B grade special (it happens to me all the frickin time!), but it's there now and I'll keep it there. Luckily I have the skills and tools to correct this sort of thing, but should I have had to? I pity anyone who didn't notice the things I did and ends up stranded and crap running due to the ill-fitting MAF sensor.
I'll report back with the improvements in due course
