leg-it aka Alexander // Melbourne - VIC

leg-it

leg-it

Crunching Gears
Location
Vic
First Name
Alex C
Drive
1997 Legnum VR-4
hey there
Im new on here, im from melb's and love my VR-4 Legnum.I have had the car for about 5 months, I used to drive a GT legacy,but It was getting old, so I am now the pilot of a 97, VR-4 Legnum, it's silver and stock as a rock, but for a HKS pod, and kenwood CD/MD player. I will get photos up ASAP.
PS, if you don't have a VR-4 get one!
 
Welcome to the club mate! :D Glad to hear you're happy with your purchase :D
 
Welcome to the site Alex :)

If I can offer a suggestion, do yourself a favour and try to find a stock air intake to replace that pod - you'll find an increase in performance and a decrease in fuel usage doing that :)
 
Welcome Alex ...
Not so sure on the pod comment above. The Pod should increase your performance, but perhaps ur economy and idle might suffer if its attached direct to the AFM, if its pulled back from it, I can't see how there can possibly be an issue.
Glad ur as enthusiastic as the rest of us. enjoy ur stay.
 
isn't the pod a bad idea because of the heat from the engine bay. That seems to be the general idea from what i've read
 
Unless you manufacture a shroud to isolate it from the heat in the bay, but then again you have to be careful as not to upset the AFM.

Back on-topic, glad you're loving the Legnum mate :D
 
SiliconAngel said:
Welcome to the site Alex :)

If I can offer a suggestion, do yourself a favour and try to find a stock air intake to replace that pod - you'll find an increase in performance and a decrease in fuel usage doing that :)
Click to expand...

it's funny you say that. you see i had a stock air box, but switched to the HKS pod with a mate who was selling his legnum, now I think that i get better economy now. I think im getting like 20 km's more out off a tank. plus it seams to be more quick to get off the line and is more free reving. but all pods are different and some are mof def better then others.
as for the hot air, isn't that handled by the intercooler ?
 
There are a few problems with pods on these cars. First the stock AFM is designed to read air coming through in a certain profile, which is dermined both by the length and diameter of the intake pipe as well as the airflow profile of the stock panel filter and box. If you stick a pod straight onto the MAF unit you'll screw this profile up and your ECU will (typically) overfuel to compensate and may even bugger up your timing, because the signals from the AFM will be inconsistent.

The other problem is heat - air pulled from around the engine will be quite a bit hotter than ambient. While the IC is designed to cool intake air, what it SHOULD be trying to do is reduce heat that builds up due to the pressure increase from the turbos - if you take a given volume of air and compress it, the air will heat up without any other external changes. The purpose of compressing the air is greater air density = more oxygen = more combustion = more power. So you cool it in the IC to further increase density, which also helps to reduce combustion chamber temps, reducing detonation.

Now if you add heat to your intake air, that temperature change will be directly added to the resultant charge air temps going into your combustion chamber - the IC will only be able to reduce temperature delta by a given amount, so if you increase the originating intake temp by a given amount, you'll increase final air temps by exactly the same amount.

All this is bad, as you end up with less dense air and higher combustion chamber temps, which increases the risk of detonation (which is very, very bad if you're already running your engine quite hard with a few mods). You might find the difference between the stock intake and your pod is minimal with the car in stock form, but once you go chasing horses the problem will become far more evident.

Ask yourself what the purpose of the pod is? The only possible benefit is decreased restriction for increased airflow, with the end result hopefully an increase in power. But look at the reality of that - if you take everything forward of the MAF off altogether so there's utterly NO restriction you'll be lucky to get an extra 10HP, and it will be right at the end of your rev range where you'll almost never see it anyway.

The other thing to be aware of is filtration capability - there's no point in getting better airflow for a few HP gain if the filter's not doing it's job and letting contaminants into your engine...

If you want to do pods, the only good way to do it is using an airbox to isolate the pod from the rest of the engine bay and replace the stock MAF with an aftermarket sensor, which means you'll need to replace your ECU too. The best setup I've seen on a VR4 so far is Valmes' dual-pod mod, but Carsten's is pretty good too (and he's the one that did all the testing which demonstrated how poorly a bad pod implementation makes your car perform).

But don't just take my word for it - do some reading and find out for yourself :)
 
and you can't forget my sealed airbox either, and remember I'm running MAP so none of the air shape stuff applies to me.
 
It's 40°C OUTSIDE and whatever we set inside the car :D

Alex, welcome to OZVR4 mate... the FTO would have been fun but now you have a new love. Cheers!
 
and your gearbox is a lot hotter than that again! Hope all of you guys over there with Auto's have trans coolers fitted by now
 
*blinks* You're the one that I drive past on the way to work in Brighton as it's parked right?
 
yes thats me. have seen you driving on north road.
when I saw you the other day your car was so so clean bro!
 
I just washed and polished it... at 2am in the morning when I was restless a few days before you saw me. It's almost obsessive-compulsive but then again, my engine bay is my dirty lil' secret :D
 
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