The sooty deposits are now "over and above" what is normal for our beloved cars. It was there before, but NOT to the same degree.
I was wondering about why my mods might be acting this way, when as you mention, lots of others are running with the same combo. The CAI and exhaust are both custom. Exhaust 3" from S-pipe back, 1 hi-flow cat, crush bends, aluminized steel. The CAI is a temporary measure until my CF CAI (God forbid the CF guys should actually get the damn thing finished). It is 2.5" crush-bent aluminzed steel based in principal on the INJEN MSP intake. It has a single port for the BOV. The return from the valve cover is T-ed into the BOV recirculating line since the MSP didn't like atmospheric vent and I am not going to do a double set-up right now.
The more I think about it, the more I think that it is fuel-cut. I took it up to redline intentionally once the other evening to remind myself of the sensation of fuel-cut. The bucking feels almost the same, but it happens in such quick succession (three or four very quick bucks of increasing instensity, this being different than the one-time dying of fuel cut) that I got the impression that it might be something else. Furthermore, the fact that it only seems to happen at partial-load/throttle mystifies me. I would have thought that I would hit fuel-cut more readily when I mashed it to the floor.
The other idea that I considered was the angle at which the BOV port enters the intake. Like every other intake, it enters at a right angle, but I wondered if the air entry might be more streamlined if it entered at a slight angle. Anyway, now that I have heard another explanation for the bucking, I don't think that it is related to turbulent air re-entry.
R