I saw on another forum that any intake tube bigger than the stock 2.25" would cause all kinds of hesitation problems with the MAF. I haven't noticed anybody on here having that problem. I'm probably going to get the Secret Weapon R, does anyone know what the tubing diameter is for that? By the way, I have a 2000 Protege 1.6L DX. Thanks for any info.

 

As I understand it, the air flow and volume of air flowing past an unmodified MAF sensor hasto be equivalent to factory or it'll misreadit's currentsituationand you'll get CEL's. So tubing diameter is very important, especially around the MAF sensor area.

Another word of advise, and this comes as second hand information: When I was shopping for an intake, I too waslooking into the Weapon R set up for my 3 series car. A friend (now ADMIN) on another forum steered me away from them stating that they are cheaply made and tend to fall apart after a time.

I forget what's they call it now, but they have a smaller tube inside a bigger tube setup that is supposed to help add additional velocity to the system. The tubing is held together (and apart) using pop rivets. I don't know about you, but I did not want to see one of those come apart and suck a pop rivet into my engine.
His advise was enough to scare me away.

 

That's good to know. Imight check out the Simota. I've heard the tubing is closer to stock. Which one did you end up using, nice 3 by the way.

 

Thank you.
After much deliberation and research (2 years) I decided to go w/either the AEM or the MazdaSpeed, as they are both made by AEM and offer good low-mid range power improvements over others that are more tuned to high end power... Fujitsu for example.
A member of another forum saw I was looking and had a "spare(?)" brand new ina terrible looking box, so I got a pretty good deal on it. I wanted the polished finish anyway no matter which one I got so it worked out great for me.

 

i have a three inch intake and i have no problems. the main issue is that the larger the tubing, the less turbulent the air coming in can be. in other words, if you go with a large diameter tubing, you need to put the MAF at the end of a long, straight tube instead of directly before or after a bend. the bends will cause locked vortexes in the intake tubing (particularly large tubing since there is more room for the air to roll around) which means that the MAF will read air that is not entering the engine.