2014 Taurus SHO - Stunning Dyno Results Baseline + K&N

[14SHOCAR]

Ever since I was old enough to drive... I was tweaking my cars. To that point, I always speculated about the horsepower gains I would receive from putting in a K&N intake system into a car. To my logic, I took the factory horsepower rating and added in the "K&N" claims (such as 12+hp) to the power at the crank and claim that's how much my car was "approximately making". I also knew that the horsepower/torque to the wheels is vastly different than crank and all-wheel-drive systems took away 20-30% away from the wheels.

After visiting http://www.latemodelthrottle.com in Waukesha, Wisconsin... I had a serious eye opener. See the video below:

To recap my findings:

1. I had 3 runs without the intake and 3 runs with the new intake.
2. My car was consistently making a maximum of ~316 WHP and ~328TQ.
3. After installing the K&N Intake system, I found that my car made only about +2 maximum WHP. It lost (yes, LOST) approximately 4 WTQ.
4. After digging deeper into the DYNO results, I noticed that while maximum horsepower was basically unchanged -- the power held out for LONGER in the RPM band. This means that while I hit maximum horsepower at 5000RPM, the rate at which I lost horsepower between 5000 and 6000 RPM was slower.
5. At 5820RPM, I had +28WHP and +28WTQ MORE than the stock baseline!
6. Per the end of the video, I can now have turbo spool and blow off sounds, which makes that inner 16 year old kid gitty.

So to this point, I learned a very valuable lesson. Just because you throw on an intake, it doesn't mean your maximum horsepower and torque goes up. It means that there is more capacity for air to be sucked into the engine during the higher demand of higher RPMs.

My next experiment or theory: I expect that maximum WHP and WTQ will go UP after downpipes, 3 bar sensor, 170 degree thermostat, exhaust, and tune. (ok, this is a given). Moreover, I expect the rate at which the horsepower is lost in the higher RPMs will be less, due to there being less restriction on the backend of the car.
Feel free to subscribe to the forum and youtube channel feed to keep up with the story over the next month as I get the remaining tunes.

 

[Big Mike 74]

Ever since I was old enough to drive... I was tweaking my cars. To that point, I always speculated about the horsepower gains I would receive from putting in a K&N intake system into a car. To my logic, I took the factory horsepower rating and added in the "K&N" claims (such as 12+hp) to the power at the crank and claim that's how much my car was "approximately making". I also knew that the horsepower/torque to the wheels is vastly different than crank and all-wheel-drive systems took away 20-30% away from the wheels.

After visiting http://www.latemodelthrottle.com in Waukesha, Wisconsin... I had a serious eye opener. See the video below:

To recap my findings:

1. I had 3 runs without the intake and 3 runs with the new intake.
2. My car was consistently making a maximum of ~316 WHP and ~328TQ.
3. After installing the K&N Intake system, I found that my car made only about +2 maximum WHP. It lost (yes, LOST) approximately 4 WTQ.
4. After digging deeper into the DYNO results, I noticed that while maximum horsepower was basically unchanged -- the power held out for LONGER in the RPM band. This means that while I hit maximum horsepower at 5000RPM, the rate at which I lost horsepower between 5000 and 6000 RPM was slower.
5. At 5820RPM, I had +28WHP and +28WTQ MORE than the stock baseline!
6. Per the end of the video, I can now have turbo spool and blow off sounds, which makes that inner 16 year old kid gitty.

So to this point, I learned a very valuable lesson. Just because you throw on an intake, it doesn't mean your maximum horsepower and torque goes up. It means that there is more capacity for air to be sucked into the engine during the higher demand of higher RPMs.

My next experiment or theory: I expect that maximum WHP and WTQ will go UP after downpipes, 3 bar sensor, 170 degree thermostat, exhaust, and tune. (ok, this is a given). Moreover, I expect the rate at which the horsepower is lost in the higher RPMs will be less, due to there being less restriction on the backend of the car.
Feel free to subscribe to the forum and youtube channel feed to keep up with the story over the next month as I get the remaining tunes.

Very informative video, my question to you is if I do a k and n intake will the car feel like it lost power or gain power? Do you feel more top end power with it? And I'm just trying to understand correctly......you gained power for only a total of 1,000 rpm from 5-5800?

 

[14SHOCAR]

Very informative video, my question to you is if I do a k and n intake will the car feel like it lost power or gain power? Do you feel more top end power with it? And I'm just trying to understand correctly......you gained power for only a total of 1,000 rpm from 5-5800?

This is always a tough question to answer. I am always skeptical of cars "feeling faster" with intake mods. First and foremost, I really enjoy the sound of the intake... It's single handedly the best part of the intake. As for the power band, I can say that as its getting higher in the RPMs, I don't feel the "acceleration fade" as much, and it snaps into gear. Now this could be transmission line pressure, or just a placebo, so I can't really tell you that this alone makes the car perform "better or faster".

I previously, I owned two BMW 335XI (3.0 inline twin turbo), and the biggest performance boost I got was from the juicebox tuner. Now the juicebox is not a PCM reflash, it basically told the mass airflow sensor that the air inlet pressure was too low and the BMW PCM increased the boost pressure. Everything else was the same about the car.

This is different than what we will see with the SHO tune. I'm curious how the Diablo Sport tune will play with the SHO as I believe it modifies shift points, transmission line pressure, timing, amongst other things. From what I hear, the change is "significant". I will definitely keep people in the loop with what I find.

As per the gains I saw, I had max horsepower at about 5000-5250RPMS. The power increase was steady between 5250 and 6250 RPMS. This doesn't mean I had max horsepower between 5250 and 6250, however. It means that as the car's power was going down at the higher RPMs it consistently was 28HP and 28TQ above the stock, non-intake baseline.

 

[Orguss]

I've typically been in the camp that believes exhaust is more important than intake. The easier it is for the motor to push out air, the more efficient it operates. This is especially true with a turbo-powered car. To get them to spool up, they need free flowing exhaust, not intake.

 

[Big Mike 74]

This is always a tough question to answer. I am always skeptical of cars "feeling faster" with intake mods. First and foremost, I really enjoy the sound of the intake... It's single handedly the best part of the intake. As for the power band, I can say that as its getting higher in the RPMs, I don't feel the "acceleration fade" as much, and it snaps into gear. Now this could be transmission line pressure, or just a placebo, so I can't really tell you that this alone makes the car perform "better or faster".

I previously, I owned two BMW 335XI (3.0 inline twin turbo), and the biggest performance boost I got was from the juicebox tuner. Now the juicebox is not a PCM reflash, it basically told the mass airflow sensor that the air inlet pressure was too low and the BMW PCM increased the boost pressure. Everything else was the same about the car.

This is different than what we will see with the SHO tune. I'm curious how the Diablo Sport tune will play with the SHO as I believe it modifies shift points, transmission line pressure, timing, amongst other things. From what I hear, the change is "significant". I will definitely keep people in the loop with what I find.

As per the gains I saw, I had max horsepower at about 5000-5250RPMS. The power increase was steady between 5250 and 6250 RPMS. This doesn't mean I had max horsepower between 5250 and 6250, however. It means that as the car's power was going down at the higher RPMs it consistently was 28HP and 28TQ above the stock, non-intake baseline.

thanks for the info, yea honestly i was more worried about if the car lost power after installing the intake but evem if its the same i may do the mod just to hear the turbos more because i dont here anything now lol, im probably going to look into a corsa exhaust for it i was going to do downpipes but i need the car to pass inspection as it is my daily driver

 

[14SHOCAR]

I've typically been in the camp that believes exhaust is more important than intake. The easier it is for the motor to push out air, the more efficient it operates. This is especially true with a turbo-powered car. To get them to spool up, they need free flowing exhaust, not intake.

I agree with Ya. I'm looking forward to see how the dyno plays out for the down pipes and exhaust.

 

[14SHOCAR]

thanks for the info, yea honestly i was more worried about if the car lost power after installing the intake but evem if its the same i may do the mod just to hear the turbos more because i dont here anything now lol, im probably going to look into a corsa exhaust for it i was going to do downpipes but i need the car to pass inspection as it is my daily driver

There is definitely no loss in power that you'd notice. It makes up for it in the upper rpms. I'm getting corsa exhaust, "off road" down pipes and a few other items. I should have them installed and a new video in May. The big thing that I was told which pushed me towards to off road cats, and I tend to agree with, the high flow cats will burn out fairly quickly in the car and it will throw emission codes. The cats burn out due to the increased temperature of aggressive tunes and he sees a lot of people having to return to delete the cat codes out of the cars. I'll just save my old cats, and put them back on when needed.

 

[SHOdded]

Never heard of this problem with the catalytics before. If you are using the Magnaflow hi-flow cats that most of the Gen IV SHO crowd (& Flex/XSport/MKS) uses, I highly doubt you will run into this problem as long as you use a competent tuner. Now if the tuner runs the mix too rich or too lean, or is inexperienced with the EB turbos, then sure I can see what you said happening.

 

[BamSHO]

Interesting dyno results. I track tested last spring with K&N Typhoon vs Stock setup with K&N panel filter. I was surprise with the results. I was running the LME 4+ tune at the time. Believe it or not the car ran .150 faster with the Stock box/K&N panel filter. Same 2000 RPM launch, thru stock exhaust with Dynomax mufflers. There was talk on EBPF forum about this same issue. Just some extra info for you.

 

[Big Mike 74]

Really that's Interesting I guess maybe the stock set up is better, I really want to do it just to hear those turbos they are so quiet

 

[14SHOCAR]

Never heard of this problem with the catalytics before. If you are using the Magnaflow hi-flow cats that most of the Gen IV SHO crowd (& Flex/XSport/MKS) uses, I highly doubt you will run into this problem as long as you use a competent tuner. Now if the tuner runs the mix too rich or too lean, or is inexperienced with the EB turbos, then sure I can see what you said happening.

Is there any reason I need to run cats other than to be Eco friendly?

Interesting dyno results. I track tested last spring with K&N Typhoon vs Stock setup with K&N panel filter. I was surprise with the results. I was running the LME 4+ tune at the time. Believe it or not the car ran .150 faster with the Stock box/K&N panel filter. Same 2000 RPM launch, thru stock exhaust with Dynomax mufflers. There was talk on EBPF forum about this same issue. Just some extra info for you.

Very interesting. The airraid box seems to be an interesting middle ground. It uses the stock bottom half of your box... I prefer the k&n only because of brand loyalty and the intake tube is solid metal. I believe (do correct me if I am wrong), but the inlet tube on an airraid is silicone.
I am curious if the issue is with LMS tune is with the software and not be car. My results were pretty negligible for change for max horsepower and pretty big in the upper rpms.

 

[SHOdded]

Is there any reason I need to run cats other than to be Eco friendly?
I am curious if the issue is with LMS tune is with the software and not be car. My results were pretty negligible for change for max horsepower and pretty big in the upper rpms.

Cats are needed a) if you are in a state that requires them, b) are a long-range planner and know that the state will change to requiring them in the future, and/or c) are concerned with emissions (eco guy). No other technical reason.

The tube being solid metal on the K&N is the advantage (sound) / detriment (track speeds). The filter itself is a pretty solid piece of work, as long as it is properly oiled, so it works well as a drop in replacement for stock.

 

[Big Mike 74]

Cats are needed a) if you are in a state that requires them, b) are a long-range planner and know that the state will change to requiring them in the future, and/or c) are concerned with emissions (eco guy). No other technical reason.

The tube being solid metal on the K&N is the advantage (sound) / detriment (track speeds). The filter itself is a pretty solid piece of work, as long as it is properly oiled, so it works well as a drop in replacement for stock.

Having the lms stage 4+ tune on my car would it be possible you need an updated tune for an air intake?

 

[14SHOCAR]

Having the lms stage 4+ tune on my car would it be possible you need an updated tune for an air intake?

From what I understand they are strongly recommended.

 

[BamSHO]

I'm currently running a modded Airaid, and modded stock box intake set up. I drill a 3" hole in the side of it and run 2 sections of flexpipe from the lower grill up threw the left fender, behind the headlight ( which is very tight ). If this actually helps, not sure, just wanted little extra air. Yeah there is a lot of heat soak with there metal tube, might be better setup if they used a plastic one. Oh did you change plugs to SP534 and gap them to .030?

 

[14SHOCAR]

I'm currently running a modded Airaid, and modded stock box intake set up. I drill a 3" hole in the side of it and run 2 sections of flexpipe from the lower grill up threw the left fender, behind the headlight ( which is very tight ). If this actually helps, not sure, just wanted little extra air. Yeah there is a lot of heat soak with there metal tube, might be better setup if they used a plastic one. Oh did you change plugs to SP534 and gap them to .030?

Not yet, I wanted to ask about the plug locations and if you have to take off the upper intake manifold to get to the back 3? Or is this an I-6? (I actually just realized I didn't know if this car was an I- or a v- lol)

 

[BamSHO]

Just have to remove the engine cover and loosed couple bolts that hold down the rear turbo piping so you can wiggle to make some room. It's not that bad of a job to do. Just take you time.

 

[SHOdded]

Having the lms stage 4+ tune on my car would it be possible you need an updated tune for an air intake?

No tune needed for air intake, to date. Apparently, no one has yet discovered a powerful enough product to make THAT much difference where a tuner is concerned about it. Now, with downpipes, you DO need to account for them in the tune.

 

[SHOdded]

Not yet, I wanted to ask about the plug locations and if you have to take off the upper intake manifold to get to the back 3? Or is this an I-6? (I actually just realized I didn't know if this car was an I- or a v- lol)

V6. I think the I configuration is only in "non-American" production today. I just saw a Motorweek special with a 4 series that had an I6.

 

[Bosscav]

Not yet, I wanted to ask about the plug locations and if you have to take off the upper intake manifold to get to the back 3? Or is this an I-6? (I actually just realized I didn't know if this car was an I- or a v- lol)

It's a V6 and getting to the back 3 plugs is no walk in the park but isnt too difficult. I would suggest taking your time because the last thing you need to do is drop a piece of dirt into the cylinder or crack the porcelain off of the top of the spark plug. TAKE YOUR TIME and blowing out each of the spark plug tunnels with compressed air while the spark plug still screwed in is advised as well...