The Best of 2021, #4: Testing The CSF VF Engineering A90 A91 Supra Intake Manifold Intercooler

The CSF/VF manifold is a work of beauty, it is CNC machined from billet aluminum by Custom Plenum Creations of Australia in several sections, like the 3D printed part and Tig welded together. The standard finish is raw CNC aluminum but there are optional powder-coating and thermal rejection finishes available – starting at $299.

This flow director was added as the result of CFD analysis to help keep the flow to all cylinders as equal as possible.

Here is how CFD was used to determine the flow directors’ shape and placement in the plenum.

You can see that the stock core has a very limited frontal area with six rows. Maximizing the frontal area of any heat exchanger is one of the most effective ways to improve its efficiency.  This makes a much bigger difference than just making the heat exchanger thicker.

With extensive use of 3D scanning, CSF/VF was able to design the manifold to use the absolutely thickest core with the largest frontal area possible while still clearing the hood and all other underhood components. The CSF core is a 12 row (twice as many as stock) bar and plate part with about 2x the heat absorption capacity as stock. As you can see here, the manifold has every boss and bolt location for every single stock component, even the engine cover. There are also 3 extra 1/8″ NPT bosses on a pad that the user can use to get manifold vacuum for different wastegates, blowoff valves, sensors, and pressure regulators. We have lots of experience trying to get racing intake manifolds to work with OEM hardware and believe us, it can be a pain trying to figure out stuff like the throttle cable anchors, idle speed control valves, drive-by-wire throttles, etc.  You won’t have any problem getting this manifold to work or having to do anything other than bolt it directly in with no fabrication or fiddling around.  The manifold also happens to fit on over 30 BMW models that use variants of the B58 engine as well!  Call CSF and see if the manifold will work on yours!