Jay- thanks for picking up the BOV and I'm glad that it works well for you (headbang) Functionally, there won't be a big difference between the BOV that you have and the new DV. The new DV (which isn't available yet) is merely smaller. So, if you plan on going FMIC later, you can still use the BOV that you already have and won't be spending any more money on that part.
Big thanks to Eric for letting us use his car for the prototyping. He will be well rewarded once we decide what goes into production.
At this point, we're mainly doing the R&D to see what works, works well and is it going to be feasible to go into production. So, give us feedback on what you think.
Here is our development on the Mazdaspeed 3
Here is the location and clearance of the factory blow-off valve and intake pipe.
This is the factory top-mount intercooler with the plastic shroud removed. The intake box, and battery box is also removed in this picture.
Now, you can see our front-mount intercooler installed. It is designed to be centered in location.
The cold-side intercooler piping is 2.5" in diameter and will feature a 1-piece design from intercooler all the way to the throttle body. There is also a mount to fix the pipe to the vehicle for additional stability.
The intercooler is hard mounted to factory locations using at total of 4 brackets to properly support the intercooler on different axes.
With the bumper installed, you can see that the intercooler is centered and covers a good amount of the opening. We didn't take pictures of it, but we are actually still utilizing the plastic air directionals that are designed by the factory so that air moving around the intercooler end tanks are still able to properly reach the radiator. The factory power steering cooler is also still installed right behind the intercooler.
The hot-side intercooler piping is 2.25" diameter and bracketed to the engine to directly follow the the movement of the engine.
This is the lower 2.25" hot-side intercooler piping. Even though the piping is 2.25", the inlet and discharge of the intercooler is actually 2.5". This gives you the option later on to increase that pipe diameter to 2.5" if you choose to make more than 450 hp and that piping diameter begins to be a restriction.
We've also designed a turbo inlet pipe that is meant to be dropped into a completely stock system. So this is a modular unit. The short-ram intake is also something that has been developed.
The placement of the Synchronic BOV is in an ideal position for its function. Our main goal in the FMIC and piping kits is to be able to bring our BOV to MS3 community and be a cleanly packaged installation.
In fact, the entire kit is designed to work with the factory airbox installed! This gives everyone in the community the flexibility to follow what they believe works. Some believe that short ram intakes don't work, some believe in a CAI, you'll have the option. Plus, this entire package can look completely stealth with a blacked-out BOV and black powdercoated piping.
A closer shot of the clearance with the factory airbox.
We also conducted some very controlled dyno testing of every component. The turbo intake was dyno'd by itself, with and without the Synchronic BOV. And many more tests. As long as it isn't a problem for the forum mods, charts will follow once we've organized all of the data. This information should be useful for the entire MS3 community as a whole and not just those that use, or would use our products.