I got my
Umnitza carbon fiber intake put in yesterday!
So far, I would have to say that in terms of power gains, it gives me about as much as using higher octane fuel (if you get my drift--I'm sure lo bux and a few other guys do)...
Well,
at least it looks nice!
Also there is a noticeable,
and good (in a positive sense), change in sound. From idle to ~2200rpm, the sound and feel are pretty much same as stock. From ~2200 to ~2800 rpm, you can begin to hear a whirl sound and then from ~2800rpm up towards 5000rpm (I haven't gone over 5000 yet since putting the intake in yesterday afternoon), the engine puts out a beautiful sort of howl, but it's not an excessively loud howl, and it's not one bit coarse--
extremely smooth! I'd say the sound is most akin to that of a larger displacement engine. It's a smooth single-tone sound with rising pitch as the rpms rise; my best description would be a baritone or tenor sound similar to a trombone. These descriptions are with heavy throttle application. If you're just cruising in top gear even around 80-85mph, which is around 3500rpm, it doesn't sound significantly different than stock (approx. 3-4dB louder; that's dB not dBA!); however, if you jump on the gas to accelerate, it really lights up! If I were to try and spell the sound out, it's like, "brrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr." Sounds great as I flip up through the gears!
EDIT: Please note that these are descriptions with all windows and moonroof
closed! If your windows are open, the intake is audible far earlier, around 2000rpm, and far louder!
If anyone has any good recommendations for a way for me to record the sound of it, please let me know--sorry, I don't have a camcorder of any sort.
Oh yeah, installation's really easy, too, since none of its parts extend into the fender anymore. I'm thinking of uncapping that little hole in the corner of the bumper but I can't figure out how to get to it. I better try and relocate that link somewhere else around here to the page discussing taking that thing out. With the way it's configured now, I highly doubt my car has much of a change of ingesting water, even without the corner cap.
-Ed
PS I will get pics of it Saturday afternoon; the people who put it in for me didn't do as clean a job as I'd like so I plan to remove it and reinstall it myself. If I had known it was so easy in the first place (I watched the guys do it--in shame), I wouldn't have bothered to have them do it. I thought removing the stock intake involved removing the fender or something to get rid of the stock intake!
EDIT: I promised pics; here they are
(broadband users, feel free to click on them and zoom in):
If you see this plate, give a quick honk and wave!
One thing that you can't see in these pics that's very important is that the foward-facing nozzle is not the primary opening; there is a large, gaping hole in the bottomside that faces the port in the well where the stock breather tube juts out. The Umnitza design is great because it won't soak up any heat, since it is made of carbon fiber and it utilizes the stock rubber/plastic tubing. Also, it won't drink water since it doesn't go out towards the ground.
Does anyone have a link to a good page with pics showing how to uncap the corner bumper intakes? I did a few searches and was unable to find anything but a few verbal descriptions that aren't, unfortunately, helping me much.
-Ed
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