First, and foremost I'd like to thank my friend Geoff for providing the intake (helping with the install) and my new friend Jack at HP Logic, for both helping install the AFE as well as giving me free dyno time to either Prove or Bust this Myth.

You can check them out at http://horsepowerlogic.com/. They're a specialty shop performing only high end work. The shop is like a hospital operating room. (Amazing)

You can contact Jack to confirm these results by calling him at (561) 842-8333.

Here's Jack.



Anyway, to get anyone not familiar with my thread up to speed; I started a thread asking about the AFE intake my buddy sold me for $200 bucks. Even at that price (I've seen it for sale at more than $600), the majority of posters claim the AFE intake to be garbage, it loses serious horse power (claims up to 25 hp losses), and it's not worth what I paid.

Here's the original thread:
https://5series.net/forums/index.php...opic=89272&hl=

I was, of course, pointed at another thread where an owner claims to have lost significant power using this intake setup. That thread can be found here:

https://5series.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=63222

And here, which has one of the lowest HP Producing M5's I've ever seen. (My car made nearly 40 more HP in stock form.)
https://5series.net/forums/index.php...opic=80175&hl=

Now, before we go any further, I think there are three things worth mentioning.

1. I have no vested interest in this other than owning the intake. I don't work for, nor have I ever had any contact with a single person from AFE. I personally gain nothing by sharing this information other than the satisfaction of helping out my fellow enthusiasts. (If something works, especially if it works well, we all want to know.)

2. There are a LOT of people who seem to be making claims, or supporting existing claims, who have no personal experience with this (or any other) intake. I caution you to consider the sources of information, the type of car, and what we're actually dealing with in a particular case before we lambaste someone as selling a junk product.

3. Be weary of what you say about a person's friends. Some people suggested my friend selling the intake was knowingly trying to unload garbage on me. Aside from the fact that I don't keep company with people like that, it's a casual and dismissive thing to say.

Know someone before you lay down such strong words.

So, now that we have all of that out of the way, on to the intake.

The AFE intake, contrary to popular belief, is NOT an open air filter. While it DOES have a filter visible with the hood open, it's got a shroud built around it and it uses the factory scoop from the front portion of the car down to where ever it terminates. In fact, I'd go so far as to say if you removed the stock "air intake tube" in the front of the car, you would probably be hurting yourself.

Plainly, this thing doesn't seal 100%, but it does a pretty reasonable job of not simply exposing the filter to hot air under the hood. It has molding that closes it off at the hood (on top) and is pretty well insulated.

For what it's worth, this is an open air intake.



My wife has the car right now, so I'll take pics of the AFE when she gets home.

Anyway, contrary to what other claims are out there, this intake makes better than "decent" power.

Let me say that again: this intake makes power and surprised me not only by how much, but WHERE it makes the power.

Here's the dyno sheet. The dotted line is the AFE pull and the solid line is the stock pull. (We made multiple pulls with each.)



As you can see, the car put down 380 RWHP/286 RWTQ in bone stock form.

After we put the AFE on and brought the car up to operating temperature, the car THEN produced 383 RWHP and 294 RWTQ.

Now, on the surface it looks like I spent 200 bucks and picked up 3 RWHP and 8 RWTQ, but peak to peak numbers are only good for internet racing. (My friends kept asking me "what the F is an internet? HA!) What REALLY matters is what kind of power you pick up, if any, in the fat part of the RPM range.

The car, whether racing or zipping around town, spends way more time between 2000 RPM and 7000 RPM than it does between 7000 and 8500, so the more average power you can make across that fat part of the RPM range, the better your car will perform.

In this case, we saw a SIGNIFICANT power increase between 3700 (ish)and 7500 (ish) in both torque and HP.

If you look at the graph, the car made as much as 20+ RWHP and RWTQ across the RPM range with the AFE intake over stock.

So, I think we can consider this myth BUSTED and that the AFE intake does, in fact, make more power.

I would recommend this intake to anyone with an E60 M5.

For 200 dollars, I totally made out in this little adventure.

In closing, let me take a second to reiterate my feelings on pounding on a car on the dyno. If you do multiple runs on a dyno in rapid succession, you are going to lose MAJOR power on any, let me say that again; on ANY car you put on the rollers.

While a dyno is a good tool, you simply can't force air across the nose or under the car like you do when you're driving it down the road at speed. Sitting still and pounding on the car is going to give you false data, as we have seen here.

I have video of the car on the rollers, but it'll take a few minutes to upload.

More pics and the video to follow.

Later peeps,
Alan

 

That was a long post. That's weird how come the dyno plot doesn't tell you the largest delta? But yes, it does look like you gained ~20 hp and tq in the 5000 - 6000 RPM range. However, you're also losing a considerable amount of power at the lower RPMs ~40 hp and tq, unless I'm reading it wrong.

How many pulls did you do?

Michael
Acute Performance

 

Interesting stuff.

 

Now go race a stock m5 with RPI scoops see how it turns out.

 

Or just remove the aFe, race a stock M5 for a baseline, put back the aFe and re-race.

 

rofl. Im still waiting for a REAL race shop to use this product. Anyone out there in the WORLD that races their M5 use such an intake? Its all over the M5board too. Even guys who stood by their intake have take that thing off. The heat shields dont do anything. Like I said in another thread, heat shields are used to block radiant heat. This is why you see if on exhaust parts like your headers, etc. If you put a heat shield around you at home and then crank up the heater, are you NOT going to be hot?

So, they dynoed your car, opened the hood, installed the intake, started the car, waited for it to warm up a little bit then did another run right? Even with a cooled down car, it failed to produce numbers like they claim. Its basic tuning knowledge. You CANT make power with that intake. The dyno sheet posted is not accurate. To test that intake you should do about 10 runs as a baseline (30 seconds between). Put the intake on and do another 10 runs (30 seconds between). If you car didnt go into limp mode, you should have lost about 20+hp. For every 10F, you can gain or lose about 1% power. We have logged IATs as high as 142F with the AFE intake whereas stock was 3-4F + from ambient (76F).

 

Interesting ...

 

Long post, yes ,but I'm nothing if not thorough.

Yes, the car did lose power down low, but if you look closely, you'll see you only lost that power from around 3200 RPM to 3700 RPM. It lost for 500 RPM and delivered a significant gain all the way from 3700 to around 8000 RPM, but we're going to focus on the loss you realize for less than a full second under WOT?

You guys are something else...

I'm not trying to be argumentative here guys, but the results are what they are. The mid range gains more than make up for a 500 RPM loss down low.

We made 4 or 5 pulls. I'm not looking to cant the results by hot lapping the car on the dyno. I get that a lot of people have some ego and pride invested in all the time they've been bashing a product that appears to work pretty well, but as I've said three times already; 10 pulls on a dyno isn't doing anything but beating on the car.

 

here we go again...

 

We pulled the car in hot, right off the street, and made 3 back to back to back pulls, with about 30 seconds in between. upened the hood, installed the intake in about 20-30 minutes, and warmed up the car, and made 3 more back to back to back passes, andin all three cases the 3rd pass made about 1more hp than the other 2, but the under hood temps werent changing that much, it was already hot. yes the hood was closed.

there is no funny business here, we have nothign to gain, nobody is trying to sell you an intake, the guy who ownes and runs the dyno does this for a living, and has for a long time, he knows what he is doing.

this is just an example of what happens when you combine the internet with people with limited knowlege. a bunch of jerkoffs who trash a produckt because they saw some other guy do it who saw some other guy do it who's second cousin saw ferris pass out at 31 flavors last night right after posting a fake dyno sheet.

you can hate all you want on it, fact is it works. just like it is supposed to.