I've not long picked up the car from Performance Autoworks. It was booked in for two jobs, firstly fit the newly acquired Mugen intake. A lot of closed box intakes for the S2000, including the Mugen, aim to take cold air from further forward than the OEM one, but to do this unfortunately a small bit has to be cut out of the bonnet. I had briefly thought about doing this myself, then I came to my senses and I booked it in for a professional to do. I'm very pleased with the results, the bit where it's been cut has been painted and made to look nice. I can only image what devastation I may have caused!
Fitted:
The cut on the bonnet:
I'm pleased with the sound, it's quite subtle until VTEC cuts in. One thing that annoyed me about the Gruppe M on my DC5 (and EP3's) is that it's very boomy at WOT at lower RPM. The mugen isn't, it's only a little louder than OEM. However when VTEC cuts in it turns into a nice subtle growl. I wanted a new intake because all of the noise was previously from the rear of the car (not surprising with a race manifold and Fujitsubo exhaust combined with the OEM intake) and this fits the bill nicely. If I had to complain about one thing, then I'd say it could do with being a touch louder, but it's early days yet.
Unfortunately, I've just uploaded a new base map so I'm stuck with part throttle only to datalog before I can start flooring it again. So far so good though, the car has a nice balanced sound to it. Although saying that I've only driven it with the roof down which increases exhaust noise a lot.
The kit was missing a fitting bracket, but a new one was made by Rich and the intake itself is solid under the bonnet.
The second job was to fit a spacer to the passenger side engine mount, in order to stop the J's Racing manifold touching the steering column when turning left. This seems to have cured it completely, so all in all a very productive day.
