Ken, you know i love you, but you are starting to sound like a snake oil salesman. really, quicker throttle response, better MPG, higher idle? all of these thigns make absolutely no sense, because the likely hood of something changing after doing such a mod of removing the side plennums is far greater than just removing a seam in the inttake runners, especialy so close to a very major bend in the air flow. if you were touting inlet guide vanes or bell mouth inlets , i woudl still argue, due to the flow disturbancies at idle and part throttle due to the throttle plate. air goes haywire and ther is so little air flow that the air sees a HUGE path when at part throttle . any gains at part throttle and idle are gained in the injector and mixture area. (and i believe in your chip efforts for sure! so, dont confuse the two)

Im just talking about work in the part throttle area. lots of things are effect. he laughs of "leaks" but thats what drives the idle up, not clenaning up some seams in the runners. there is no data here. remember, we did a a major mod with a part that i thougth would provide huge gains. it was a bell mouthed inlet for the maf and a intake air filter spacer. it looked great. smoothed the major inlet. was a major change, but it lost 4hp. repeatatedly. i wanted it SO bad to work, that i put it on, dynoed and took it off. it was a loser in HP. it didnt change anything else. throttle response is really tought to measure and is usually perception too. heck, i drive a 70hp less car every day, with a 25lb heavier clutch and i cant notice the difference , really ( the stroker vs the 6.0 stroker street car with GTS clutch)

do you think that a clean air filter will give you better gas mileage??

this mod is SO easy to test, yet there is NO testing done here. just do a dyno run , with and without and see what you see, with the only change being the rings. i guareantee that if you fix the throttle in a position and reasemble you will get the same part throttle power . when you spend some time on a fllow bench, you see the effects of these types of changes. not much happens when there is not much air flowing (during idle) . the air flow sees what is the same as what the full throttle air flow would see if the the runners were a foot in diameter!

 

its often said that the S3 intake system is the better intake. maybe the modifying it might really give some better gains. sure, less peak torque vs the s4, but maybe you can squeeze some better hp out of it.

go to the dyno and do a test and report back. you cant feel 10hp around town. I was able to detct this at the track because you are at the limit, at tempurare, and redline shift points are happening a particular spot on the straight. if you hit the turn the same prior, you will redline at the same spot. when you dont, somethign up. thats how i noticed the HP down for the bad cam timing. also, before the event, 60-100mph times were 6.5 vs the normal 6.0seconds. provide some actual results and it will speak much louder than you telt a better idle, or less pedal pressure at hyway speeds. if alll that is true, the mod alone would be worth some decent hp WOT, dont you think??

 

Mark... with all due respect. And I mean that in every sense of the word. My S3 was a different animal before Ken's help. I (and hundreds of others) owe the renewed love of our cars to Ken.

 

Exactly, you can't feel 10HP around town.
I shutter to invoke dyno, parastic loss, baselining and other well trod issues..but really, the TQ rings make intuitive sense for reducing *some* degree of cavitation. Measurable? I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't measurable beyond the reasonable error in two dyno runs. I mean look at all the excitement over a couple HP from the EIS..and how's that HP to cost ratio by comparison?
The intake was designed the way that it is to facilitate removal. Filling some of the void area seems, by virtue of logic, to address some of the interruption in flow though laminar physics are beyond me. Hey, even if it is placebo affect, they deliver one of the better returns on investment this side of washing/waxing. So why try to pretend that diagnostics are essential?

You're so hankering to test- go ahead! Find a platform and do it. Unless you demonstrate consistent repeated losses, from the rings- and I mean aggregate loss not one lowpoint int eh curve, I'm still onboard.

 

no disrespect taken!

what you saw from ken was due to other things, not the rings, i can tell you that. Until i see some real results, that quantify the gains or losses, I really cant imagine that they would do that much even at full throttle, and an order of magnatude less at idle and part throttle. sometimes i wash my car and it feels 10hp faster! perception is dangerous.
ive fooled people with placebo so many times too. the mind is a powerful instrument!

the only think reasonable people can do, is a 60 to 100mph test. that can weed out 10-20hp gains pretty easily. (same road, stopwatch or better, video of speedo before and after mods) the rest of this stuff is just guess work.
audibly, however, my cam change in regards to timing , was a big change at the track that one time, and on the dyno, it was near 15hp)

I would LOVE to be proved wrong with this one, on the dyno, or some kind of contolled test, but im pretty sure that will never happen.

 

Was there a claim for 10-20HP gain? I missed that.

And then there's the variable of the two cars, you'd need a baseline run to suss out any differences from wear, tear and tuning, right? And a good three or four of those to average out to account for the human factor...

That said, a roll on test would be interesting information.
Note, that's 'information', not necessarily data....

It is nice to see a balanced tone on a little R/L 928 non-concur item, though!
;-)

WAIT...naw...how'd I miss that: (deleted)

 

You are the problem, as it is clear to
Many here. Stop
****ting on other's threads to tell them you are smarter or better, or whatever. All
Those words and nothing to say....

 

Hey Ken, why don't you invent some kind of electric supercharger

 

Just dump the S3 manifold and put on and an S4 manifold. Maybe even get the flappy working.

 

Interesting. I wonder how that would look on an ad for something you're selling?

And yet you call Ken a 'snake oil salesman'. You're a complicated guy Mark. But I'm afraid you've lost all the credibility you once had with me.

And for the record, Ken didn't say the rings added any HP. He even said they didn't affect the top of the arc at all. What is claimed (and noticed by those of us using them) is that driveability is improved. The idle is smoother and therefore can be lowered. The low end grunt is more noticeable. There is a very noticeable pull that used to happen higher in the RPM range that is lowered with the use of the torque rings.


And ruin a perfectly good S3?

My S3 with crossovers, the CAI (probably no help at all on the dyno) and an EARLY version of Ken's chips dyno-ed above a stock GTS at the wheels (292-294 I think) and over 310 lb-ft of tq!. I haven't tested the latest version of the chips with the torque rings but my HP/wt ratio along with the torque and throttle response is just plain scary when it's pushed to my limits (haven't pushed the car to its limits yet).


BTW- Sorry to the OP about this major thread-jacking.

If it means anything I'll offer this advice: If those tubes are too soft like the aftermarket ones they will cause you no end of headaches. You'll get them tightened down perfectly cold and then when everything gets up to full temp they'll start to squirm out and leak. You'll have to tighten them cold and then again warm every time you pull the side boxes. I recommend getting the real ones or something like Mark Rs that have more stiffness and won't bulge and slip.

 

Well, one thing I would like to put in here is that, so far, everything Ken has promised on one if his inventions have paid off in spades. I have every single product on my s3 except for the lift bars, I had already made my own. I just ordered the s3 chips with rings and am anxiously awaiting them. His bunp stick worked so well that It allowed me to do a job that I simply, in my current contidion, did not have the physical strength to do. I had the engine out and on a stand, easy right? I followed the WSM to do the initial timing but was a tooth off on the passenger side no matter what I did. It looked perfect looking at the marks on the gears. Maybe just 1/2 tooth to the left too much. Once I put his timing kit on, I could not even get the gear close enough to get the timing mark anywhere near the notch. What was happening was that with a big wrench on the cam trying to turn the assembly without over torquing the gear nut was just impossible. Ken's bump stick grabs not only the cam nut but the 3 small bolts that holds it tight against the gear. It gave just the little bit of touque I needed to get it absolutely perfect. It was nice putting the engine back in knowing that the damn timing was perfect. I think I paid somewhere arund 75.00 for that tool but had pulled on that damn cam for days. It was worth every penny just as the porkensioner. So far, he has my trust and If he gives his word that it works well, I will trust him. If he turns into a snakeoil salesman, it won't take long for people to realize it and his market will be gone. However, I find him to be quite a good seat of the pants engineer and I doubt that will happen. I have seen engineers use slide rules, calculators and computers for months on end to prove something that yet another engineer walked up and said 'Just try this' and it was an instant solution. I think Ken is one of the latter ones. They exist and when we find one, we should at least listen and have a look at what they say. I think we would just look like fools otherwise....

Mark K., I love your racing, your courage and your intelligence and wish you nothing but the best. I believe you are a good scientist but I will bet every $$ I have that you , too, have met an engineer like I described above. I believe in math. But in working it out, it can get so skewed in certain places even Einstein couldn't tell you if you were using the correct formulas or not.

Good luck, keep up with the great racing and good analysis.

 

People are not listenning here. Get a 2" rad hose, cut it to size and this will end any possibility of these EVER leaking again. The rad hose stick like glue to the intakes, as a matter of fact, it will start pulling the paint off when when they stay on for a while. The hose are ever so sligtly smaller than the intake tube ends so its a slighly snug fit even before the clamps go on. By nature, they are designed to live under the hood, so it will never be an issue again.

 

Ken, if you start selling snake oil put me down for 9 quarts.

 

There it is- seems to cover a lot of bases at once:

 

Hey, Imre, thanks for the Rad Hose tip. I just bought new connectors but as I have a couple of rad hoses lying around, I just might try it once my chips and rings get here.