Warning Aem Owners!!!!

[Woody]

Sir Nuke,

Yeah right. I thought about that later "Check Engine" Light.

Yeah, I've been driving mine for over a week with the AEM Short Ram, and I have not seen any "Check Enginge" lights go off. I have heard elsewhere that the AEM tends to pull hot air into the engine compartment. But so far I have not seen any problems on my P5. Also, I've heard that the "CEL" is the most common problem after installing an after-market air intake, and I thought it was related to one of the sensors (the O/2 ?), but again I have not had a problem with mine, and seat of the pants it DOES increase performance. I will dyno the car again in a couple weeks to measure the gain.

- Woody

 

[1sty]

In my conversations with Jim at Racing beat I found out that our cars emissions and sensors get all messed up if the engine breathes hot air. This is one of the reasons an intake was not used in the production run of the MP3's. Short rams will never help performance, it has to be COLD AIR.

MHP were carbon fiber but they are now aluminum becuase they lost their supplier of Carbon fiber.

 

[Woody]

1st MP3,

As far as cold air impact, I absolutely agree with what you are saying - it agrees with what I know about sport-bike engines (I have more experience with sport-bikes), but it seems to me that the AEM Short Ram also opens up the intake, an allows the car to breath a bit more. I expect you probably can get more more bump with a cold air system such as Injen. That all said, I will know on June 11th what the AEM really did, because that's when I'm dynoing the car again. I did a dyno run before install of the AEM, and plan on an AFTER dyno run scheduled for June 11th. I feel that people tend to believe what they want to believe about mods, and seat of the pants is not a very good measure of mod gains. A person responds to the SOUND of the engine, and exhaust, the envirnoment, how he FEELS that day, etc.. All that being said, I can feel a difference, but I should know for sure when I do the AFTER dyno run, and compare the 2. Why more people don't do before and after dyno runs is beyond me, and a continaul source of irratation for me. People spend money on mods, but not dyno runs to really see what the impact of the mod is. Its beyond me.

- Woody

- Woody

 

[1sty]

The main concern racing beat had with them was that our engine encounters alot of problems when fed hot air. Although a short ram will allow more air into the engine, after a short drive and its over 100 degrees in the engine bay the gains of extra air start to become less and less due to the fact that the air is getting less dense at the higher temperatures. On a dyno due a run with the engine bay cold. Then run the car around town for 1/2 hour then throw it back on the dyno you should see a horsepower decline.

 

[Woody]

1st MP3,

As far as dynoing, I plan on driving about 20 miles from my office in St.Paul, accross to North Minneapolis and then do the test almost immediately (as soon as they can roll me up into the dyno machine) - and so the engine will definately be hot, and I would think the engine bay would be mostly hot too. (Their shop is definatly not air conditioned.) So I expect that the conditions will be nearly identicial when I re-dyno. I did my base line the same way, that is, drove from the office, then got on the dyno ASAP. The only differences will be the AEM short Ram, and a few more hundred miles on my car.

I expect that there can be limitaions to dynoing, for example, Ram air effect on sport-bikes is a b**** to measure, because Ram air only works when movement of the sport-bike starts to force cold air into the air induction, and sealed ram air chambers, this is extremely difficult to mimic on a dyno machine. But, on the other hand its better than seat of the pants, I mean unless we want to tell each other fish storyies untill the sun goes down, we need some way to QUANTIFY these mods.

I know some people will tend to not trust them, but AEM has dyno tests posted for the Mazda 1.8L :

http://www.aempower.com/pdf/results/22-480 Mazda Protege 1.8L SRS.pdf

Based on that and a lot of other research in advance, I expect to get between 3 to 5.5 hp increase over my base-line. If I don't get ANY increase, I'll be surprised, and a little disappointed. But at least it looks good, and it sounds good.

But we are kind of getting of the track here, I'd like to hear more about Mazdamp3's specific problems. I hope he comes back.

- Woody

 

[1sty]

Do one run hot then one cold to see the difference if possible. I'll bet we'd see some interesting results.

 

[Woody]

1st MP3,

Yeah, I expect I would get different results.

- Woody

 

[DooMer_MP3]

I still think I'm going to go with AEM for my intake. mazdamp3_18, what has happened to you since you posted this? You've left us hanging. My reason for still going with the AEM is because it isn't a conventional short ram and its placement gets a lot of OUTSIDE air pushed onto it (there is a hole down there that actually gets some good positive pressure from the outside air). Also, people have driven long trips with them and felt the pipe. They were still cold to the touch. Either way I'm willing to bet a properly installed AEM and Injen are pretty much the same in HP gains.

Chris

 

[Woody]

Chris & others,

I have the AEM short ram, and I have been commuting about 25 miles one-way to a class this week from north Mpls where I live, to a south suburb. It has included some stop and go traffic. I stilll have not had an engine light go on, and I have not seen any signs of over-heating. No problems that I can see. I will dyno the car next week.

- Woody