Tibminn

Alrighty, here it goes.

I have a friend that drives a WRX and both him and his whole community are convinced that if you add bigger diameter piping (such as a CAI) to your car that it will severely screw your MAF sensor up, in fact the word fried was used. I suggested that maybe it was a subaru only thing because of the hundreds of members we have here that have AEMs and so forth with the 3" piping that have had ZERO reported problems. Nonetheless, they hold to thier argument and say that it is true for all MAF sensors and that we are screwing ours up and simply dont know it.

They thought maybe becuase tibs aren't tuned as much as WRX we just havent noticed... Thats bs if you ask me. Actually I believe he said "thats because people dont research tibs as much. dyno them, put them on widebands, and tune them with standalones and you'll see." I told him thats all been done many times, but of course people think hyundais are inferior to everything so that didnt matter.

Their whole basis for this is that their MAF is (again this is what Ive heard) set for a calculated diameter piping and that if you mess with that your MAF will be fried (which has supposedly happen to them). My thoughts are that this may only be a suby related problem, but they insist it is the same for all MAF sensors on any make of car. What are your thoughts?

Dmitry

IMO it's BS.

Let's think.......

if you put bigger diameter pipe before and after MAF and use same MAF with same diameter (as before) there shouldn't be any problems/difference.

MAF is probably calibrated to specific diameter of the sensor tube. So if you put it in bigger diameter pipe it will work as well but will just show different V on the output (like using 2 bar MAP instead of 1 bar, for example).

Tibminn

One of the people even went as far as saying this:

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>So far in our shop we have seen 2 WRX's with melted pistons, both with AEM cold air intakes, this was there only mod. I am not saying this could not happen with another brand intake, but we have only seen it happen with AEM. This is just my 2 cents.</div>

wtf? melted pistons from a larger diameter tube!?

And I tend to agree with dmitry. The MAF has its own tube, no matter what the diameter around the sensor is the same. Because its a bottleneck the air might end up moving faster or something, but it really shouldnt effect it.

supercow

i think the fact that most of us have put 50-60k on their intakes and no cels should prove what they are saying is a load of crap. Those guys with fried pistons probably up'd the boost as well and didn't want to admit it. And I don't think aem would be in business very long if their products caused engine failure...

edit: got a link? I wanna see what these guys are saying... lol.

FlyRyde

What a bunch of tools. Basically, our lil econobox tibbies aren't tuned like subies. Tuned meaning controlled by the ECU. THEIR Ecu is set to accept a certain size pipe, and when they change that, its f's up the system. Our ECUs are not that specific. I've heard many new cars are becoming more and more a technical nightmare with tuning due to enhanced ECU's. Its not just a Suby thing, its any car with pissy ECUs in my opinion. I could be dead wrong but that makes plenty of sense to me. The only thing Tibs must worry about with a MAF is that you dont cut out the honey comb air straightner inside the MAF housing. Some idiots have called that thing a silencer, LMAO. noob status. But yeah, these Suby guys just found a downside to having one of the kick ass cars around right now... aw soo sad cry me a river! I guess they'll have to just pick up one of the many many other bolt ons for their car. Unless it melts their fragile little pistons... lol, RIIIIIGHT. They'll live, dont worry if they know about Tibs, cause if they did, their .02 would matter. But they dont, and it doesn't. Like me giving advice on a Lambo, lol, I just know tibs and 4 bangers.

silvershark78

Thats just silly. After all these years of growth in the import tuning industry, don't you think this would be a known problem by now. Don't you think AEM would be out of business if this were a regular occurance. We all know how much R and D AEM puts nto their stuff. Sounds to me like a bunch off crap

Tibminn

yeah theres acutually a couple (and i do only mean a couple) enlightened members of their site that have pointed out the exact things a few of you above did too.

Seems like you guys agree with me that its just a suby thing. I didnt argue about that, but when they said it was for ALL mafs in any car I was like wtf? no

Casper

The AEM will not affect the flow past the MAF. The only way they can screw it up is if they take the sensor out of the stock plastic pipe part and try putting it in a bigger pipe. This will result in wrong measurements as there is more air going in at the same flow rate.

A bigger pipe on either end (with a MAF in tact) will yield the same results as the stock pipes.

Mad-Machine

from what I remember of Subaru.. they actually use a rather small volume intake manifold on their cars. To do so, they use specific sized intake tract to make up the difference between what the engine needs and what the manifold can hold.

SCC had an older 2.5RS (pre wrx) that they killed several MAF sensors on with an intake.

renante

I installed a haltech e6x computer.
The tuner removed my stock maf, because he said its not required.

I've got one on my desk, if some subaru wrx owner wants it.
Plus i've also purchased a set of denso 720cc fuel injectors from a WRX Sti engine.