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BOE Evora CAI

198K views 915 replies 124 participants last post by  jmardy 
#1 · (Edited)
Hints of better things to come for Evora and Evora S owners. BOE has produced me a great Cold Air Intake system for the Evora S and is modifing to the NA version of the car.

2.5% power and torque gains at 6450 rpm, gains start at 5600 and grow to Redline, no losses along curve, stable air flow ratios. System cuts weight out of tail and offers true cold air draw direct from body scope as per OEM and offers easier access and maintenance of filter element.

Quote from Phil at BOE:"Feeling very good about the car. It drives nice. Throttle response is very crisp and it's VERY eager to rev on tip in!"

Power plots
i) White curve - Komo-Tec Header, Komo-Tec 200 cell Cat, BOE Kold-fire custom tune
ii) Blue curve - (i) + BOE CAI
 

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#2 ·
Don't do this! I've sworn "No mods!"

And please don't make her sound better!
 
#20 ·
It does sound better, more like an exotic car and its a fully reversible mod.
 
#3 ·
Its just a little mod, in the spirit of Colin himself.
 
#4 ·
2% is about 5hp for the n/a and about 7 for the S. I assume that 2% wrhp?

Did Phil say when it's going to be available? Also, if I have the EV300 tune, would I need an update for the CAI?
 
#6 · (Edited)
I got extra 8 rwHp and 6.5 ft-lbs torque at 6500 rpm . Need to talk to Phil at BOE Fabrication about availability and if tuning mods are needed or not; mine was tuned.
 
#7 ·
The car went in for one thing, but weather delayed road testing the car aftter that work was done and delayed my ability to drive it home, so what else was I to do.. no need for the car to sit in a corner of Phil and Andrews shop collecting dust.
 
#10 ·
Hi guys,

Not quite ready for primetime, but shouldn't be far...

The goal here was to create an intake that doesn't need tuning (works with stock Lotus tunes and aftermarket tunes), retains the direct "ram air" effect from the body duct on the car, add a little potential for power;), make service easier, drop some weight, and make for a better audible note from the intake path. I think we did that with this setup:up:


Couple notes that make it different from current offerings:

1) Lotus did a nice job of giving us a hole in the body work that was designed for feeding outside air to the intake. We retained use of this and have aircraft ducting going from the bodywork air intake scoop to the new filter box. There is no need for a new heat barrier or wall to be inserted in the engine bay.

2) The filter is foam and enclosed in an intake "box", rather than cloth weave in the open engine bay. This has several benefits. Foam breathes better for longer, filters better, and the enclosed box helps to introduce air uniformly to the filter aiding in laminar flow to the MAF sensor, while protecting the filter from damage. It also allows for a tiny bit of that ram air effect (albeit, surely not much)...

3) MAF housing design is much different and is designed to work with stock Lotus programming. We've tested another design out there that wasn't designed with adequate attention to how sensitive this MAF sensor is to air flow. The stock box has no air straightener, the air enters the MAF tube while taking a 90 degree turn, there's a diffuser on the box, etc... bottom line, it' not a simple task to recreate this path to achieve the *needed* MAF values to ensure the car will run correctly at all throttle openings and load levels. If the MAF value is manipulated too far down (such as the case with another aftermarket intake), the engine will be throwing artificially high timing and lower amounts of fuel at the motor. Great for making power in the absence of safety and control of the ECU, but that's surely not the correct way to get power...

This MAF flow design oversight has been a particularly large issue when combined with all cars and tuning, IPS cars, and S cars. There are also issues with "lazy throttle tip-in" and lack of "crispness" in the driving experience. When designing Julian's setup, we built several MAF tubes of various diameters for the car with different internal air "aids" within those tubes to finally get the right combination that produced the correct MAF response in all load sites in the map, made the right power, has exceptionally eager throttle tip-in, etc. It sounds SOOOO awesome as well. The air scoop is just behind the driver's side window on the body work, and OMG, it sounds cool!:cool:-eek-:shift:

Cheers,

Phil
 
#11 ·
Phil, you are an evil man intent on separating me from my hard earned money :)

Do you guys plan to customize the EV290 tune for this intake. Just curious if there is even more to be gained that way.

While I wait for your answer I will be feverishly refreshing your site's product page . . .


Sent from AutoGuide.com App
 
#12 ·
I'm surely tipping my hand with this information, but here's some data...

I've reduced the data stream to only show pertinent data to the intakes. Notice the cursor tag at approx 6,000 RPMs. Notice the MAF values.MAF values at reference RPM are the primary drivers for spark and fuel input. Here, you can see typical stock MAF values at 6,000 RPM, ours, and "others"... If the MAF value is off a couple percent at a particular RPM, no big deal. If the MAF value is off by 10%+ at a specific RPM value, we're way out in limbo for the tune (stock or otherwise). "Other" CAI is off near 15%.

Hope this helps to explain why all the effort...

Phil

Edit: hard to read pic, but Other is 209, stock is 245, BOE is 245
 

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#14 · (Edited)
Awesome that there will be yet another option for us Evora owners.

Definitely looking forward to some sound clips.

Btw I wonder if the "other" measurements was of the highly popular Radium CAI. I personally have not had any problems with mine (and in fact would go as crediting it for remarkable improvement in my cars reliability since installing it).
 
#19 · (Edited)
External intake draw is exactly the same location as OEM, while OEM does have some extra protection of feeding air box from lower half updrafting through the filter then feed out to manifold from top this setup the new layout also draws uphill from the intake hose (positioned and sized similar to stock) under the intake scoop, into the airbox with a conical filter above the bottom surface so should be tolerant of rain. This box has been used succesfully on the Elise/Exige for a while now.
 
#24 ·
The sucking/hissing sound is the high frequency sound of the air slipping by the throttle blade in the lower throttle ranges. This intake will have more sound deadening of those higher frequencies due to a) the foam filter and airbox being more destructive to those higher ranges (the hissing), and b) the enclosed airbox helping to attenuate the sound more in general than a simple K&N on a tube...

That said, the intake *will* be louder than stock by a good margin. We've been running a similar system on the 111s for years (see link below) and I know the hissing sounds referred to, as the hissing *used* to be very loud when we ran KNs on a tube. Once we switched over to this system on the 111, the harshness of the hissing considerably subsided and is no longer a distraction:up: I'm sure someone will hear the remaining, albeit subtle, hissing noise (I have not noticed it yet), but at somepoint these are the noises that engines make when "uncorked" :cool:

In my limited experience on the S car, it sounds great. It's not so loud that it's overshadowing the beautiful exhaust note that the car has (after headers, etc), but it does finally give you the presense that you're in a mid-engine car!:shift:


Pricing out yet...? Ballpark figure...?
Will be similar to the system for the 111 setup on our site: Elise/Exige CAI System

The mounting is different, but not really more costly. Installation is surprisingly easy. Hardest part is getting the old box out and that's not bad...

Cheers,

Phil
 
#25 · (Edited)
An overlay of 4 Evora S dyno plots (Hp & Torque). Blue: my baseline, Red: + Header, 200 Cat and Tune; Green: + CAI; Purple: compared to Ramtin1000 recent plot. Eerily close, and totally wacko coincidences other than we have similar mods but were run on different type dynos under different conditions.
 

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#28 ·
It's amazing how my car made more power than yours when you didn't have the CAI and now that you have it makes about the same as mine without it.I think we have very much the same type of upgrades on our cars. I can't wait to see how much more power mine will make with the CAI
 
#29 · (Edited)
Ramtin1000: I do think the slope of the power curves is influenced by our header selections; mine are stubby whiles your SuperSprint headers have longer tubes before collection. Seems to have rotated your curve up with higher peak (which is the opposite of what I understand about header design, oh well this is new to me, my Rotaries dont even have cam shafts, let alone adjustable ones, lol) …
Beyond 6650 rpm I can not specklate on the shape of my curve. As the pre CAI install power kink at 6500 mirrors yours I would assume shape of curve follows your trend out to the 7200. Now that my CAI filled that torque/power hole in, I just don’t know what happens out there; up or down ??

All this dyno'g aside the real measure is enjoying these cars. Never before have I purchased a car and started mod’s on the power side, always suspension first. However after spending a day at Hethel lapping their track hours on end, I concluded that this car had the handling and brakes to take on more power with easy.
 
#30 ·
FWIW- Was doing a little more road tuning/tweaking yesterday. I specifically made a point to listen for the hissing... "Got noth'n"- at any throttle angle. Maybe it's an "S" thing, but there is no hissing anywhere in the throttle range that I could detect...

On the other hand, once on the loud pedal, the blower noise is so visceral, that I felt I could almost count the lobes as they were whirling around!-eek-:cool::D

-PV
 
#31 ·
When comparing intakes or other mods with this car:

The intake temps change the power output a LOT on these S cars--- like 30whp, a lot. So to get good/consistent results on the dyno, you have to make sure your logs are near identical or your data will be skewed. Just from radiant motor heat sitting on the rollers, your IATs on the dyno will go from 80F to 100+F despite the CAI. Dince the car isn't moving, the sensor is absorbing so much heat from working the motor hard in a stationary setting. In addition, the blower housing, and coolant temps will also vary. All impacting results. Somewhat small coolant temp changes will also impact open loop AFR and timing.. So again, conditions have to be *the same.*

When dynoing Julian's car, we were able to swap intakes while the car was on the rollers and match temperatures of the blower housing, IATs, and coolant. If you don't take care with these things, measuring the results of a mod won't be very useful...

IMO, you need fans of course, a proper OBD2 logger, temp gun, and dyno shop that will allow you to work on the car while its strapped down in addition to a lot of time so that you bring the temps back down to the orignial start point.

Cheers,

Phil
 
#34 · (Edited)
Picked up the car today and drove home. The car is great, the tune is perfection and the sound is AWESOME. While at first I wondered if I had taken it too far, and would hate the near 500 mile drive home (which was very comfortable going up in stock car). After all the Evora is very civil and on it purchase I swore to myself I would not create yet another track monster that became worthless as sports car to take a Sunday afternoon drive with the wife, but into the drive I found to personalities. Cruising gave the sense of some pleasant exhaust sounds, for which were even adjustable with the “sport” button, can use on or off if an exhaust resonance picks up (example, sport on in 5th at 82 mph, sport off in 6th at 82 mph). Before I have never driven without the button ON; turnkey, push button, shift into 1st and drive away. No that is not needed unless you want the true sport features, enhanced throttle response, reduced traction control and higher rev limit. I drove home about half and half. Figured the enhanced throttle would be missed the most, and while I would like it to be permanently engaged, I found the extra midrange torque and tip-in power to fully compensate.

Now acceleration produces some beautiful sounds both exhaust and intake, did three 80 to 120 blasts one each in 4th, 5th and 6th in each it sounds as if a jet is outside your side window trying to make a fly by as your hear the SC intake sucking air like a turbine winding up. Definitely noticeable, but then also user controllable. The journey home was done without the radio, not because of cabin noise, as I was able to talk and hear on the cell phone, but because the engine sounds were far higher fidelity than those crappy OEM Alpine speakers.

In summary of the BOE CAI S version: Clean install, True Cold air intake from same cutout port as OEM (more integrated than brand X), No weird whistling noises at idle or low throttle, none intrusive noise while with windows closed, but says that the engine is breathing hard under heavier throttle. Phil and Andrew of BOE did a fantastic job.
 
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