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| Next the heat shield is bolted in place. This helps prevent the ingestion of hot power robbing underhood air. |
During development AEM engineers run the stock intake tract on a flow bench across a wide range of flows while logging voltage output. This enables the engineers to make a map of MAF sensor output over the engine's operating range. Then the engineers design three or more prototype intakes of different diameters and lengths and correct the MAF output on the flow bench using the converter box.
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| The intake tube, support brackets and filter go in next with ease. |
Then it's on to the dyno to find the initial iteration that shows the most promise for a good power increase. Once the initial design is chosen, it is tweaked to optimize it for best output and the converter box may go through several iterations of programming as well. Once the design is validated on the dyno, the car is driven for many miles while monitoring long and short term trims to make sure that the converter box curve is indeed correct and the engine's tune will not drift. Finally the intake is ready for sale. AEM's magic box is truly an innovation allowing power gains on late model cars very similar to what was seen in the good old days.
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| The MAF signal converter box plugs in next. |
For our evaluation we chose a 2010 Lexus IS350. Late model Toyota, Scion and Lexus products are infamously resistant to obtaining improvements from air intakes so we wanted to test one of the worst case examples. We obtained a sample Lexus IS350 and ventured to the dyno facility of SR Motorcars. We baselined the Lexus making repeated runs while monitoring the coolant and intake air temperature with an OBDII scan tool. When the power output stabilized to within a horsepower or two, we selected a middle of the road run as our baseline. Stock our Lexus put out a corrected to SAE, 243 whp and 210 lb/ft of torque,
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| The shrouds and covers go in next. |
We then installed the AEM ETI intake and reran the car on the dyno following the same procedure. The AEM intake delivered with the Lexus pumping out 249 SAE corrected whp and 218 lb/ft of torque. This is an impressive gain of over 6 hp and 8 lb ft of torque. The gains were pretty consistent with the dyno trace of each run practically lying on top of the previous run within an hp of each other. Amazingly the run to run variation was less with the AEM intake than with the car completely stock. So far we have been running the car a week and the gains seem consistent and the long and short term trims are in line with normal operation.
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The final installation is very clean and stock looking.
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Stock our Lexus put out 243 whp and 210 lb/ft of torque. The AEM intake delivered 249 whp and 218 lb/ft of torque. This is an impressive gain of over 6 hp and 8 lb ft of torque. |
