Now here is where it gets worse with the connecting tube. Years back I inserted my ported throttle body into the outlet of the connecting tube to compare the difference. This picture is looking through the exit of the TB into the exit of the tube. My TB is ported out to 62mm. The exit of the tube is 56mm. That is -7mm SMALLER than the inlet of my ported TB. Even compared to a stock unported throttle body it's smaller. The stock unported throttle body measures 57mm at the inlet. Meaning that the connecting tube is -1mm SMALLER than even a stock TB inlet. Further more that lip on the exit (ESPECIALLY on my ported TB) also causes turbulence in the form of a toroidal vortice, or a vortex ring. That affectively shrinks the inner dimeter of the tube because the air can only easily flow through the center of the toroidal vortex. Not only does the tube reduce from 61mm down to 56mm, it has a tight 120ºish bend (?) in to it. The sharp bend is not good for airflow. As the air turns the corner it will delaminate from the inner wall of the tube. When the air sheds off the inner wall it creates an eddy, or turbulence. Again that turbulence creates a restriction by reducing the area of clean laminar flow. It creates that restriction right at the bend inside an ever receding inner diameter of the tube = NOT good for air flow or making power. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Good eye. Yet another restriction. I have talked about cutting those out, but that may be one of the very last things I do. The bigger restriction is the MAF/TB connecting tube. Though I have removed the screens on both ends of the MAFs. I'm telling you the f119 is plugged up BAD. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I wonder if we could replace those vanes with smaller and narrower ones, or just grind them down a piece to increase flow. I was thinking that if they are not involved in any electrics (but only there for heat management and air streaming), they might be completely replaced with narrow copper fins.
A while back, I was given something that was called a "gizmo" to test in my M3. It was a replacement MAF screen that seemed like it could do a lot, but in reality, it did very little if anything at all. Maybe there were other areas that needed more work and that's why it didn't show any gains. Who knows, but here's what it looks like: Image Unavailable, Please Login
Continuing with the "up stream" restriction. I decided to take apart my airbox and snap some pics. The 1st pic is of the bottom portion (a bit dirty in there), and the 2nd pic is of the top flipped upside down. Not a very good design in my opinion, especially the inlets to the MAFs. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Professor Blair was brought up earlier in this thread with mention of this article of his. http://www.profblairandassociates.com/pdfs/RET_Bellmouth_Sept.pdf I read this article a few years back. After having read it, and then looking at the MAF inlets in the stock airbox, its pretty clear they are not the optimum shape. First of all the chicken**** flare they put on the lip is a joke. Then the angled cut of the pipe isn't all that great either. I measured the length of the pipe. The short section measured roughly 3 & 3/4" inches, and the longer part measured about 6" long. Both way too short in my opinion for the incoming air to have a chance to straighten out before it gets to the MAF. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Then I measured the inner diameter of the MAF mounting, it was about 61-ish mm wide +/-. A hair smaller than the I.D. of the MAF. Image Unavailable, Please Login
I decided to insert the MAF into the mounting area of the inlet pipe. Then took some pictures of the inside. The 1st picture is the view from how it looks from inside the airbox. The 2nd pic is looking in from the exit of the MAF. You can see in the second pic how the inner diameter of the inlet tube is smaller than the inner diameter of the mass air flow sensor. Plus look at all the room the hot wire housing and heat sink vanes take up. That does not look conducive to good airflow in my eyes. You gotta have good airflow to make power. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Like I have said, the ENTIRE intake system needs to be redesigned. In my opinion the entire stock intake is the biggest restriction and reason why the f119 does not make the power it is capable of.
The 348 being choked off is a nice conspiracy theory. But, actually, it is not so crazy. The F136 Ferrari maserati motor makes less power as a maserati than as a Ferrari. By outward appearances all I see different is intake plenums. Certainly there is more to it than that but it all starts with how much air you can suck.
This should be a fairly easy theory to test - remove all of the stock intake plumbing and run your ported mafs in a straight line to the plenum. Or put a 2.7 355 intake system on, itb's and all, and see what it can do. I think you'll find that they sized everything together correctly and you'll need to adjust cam timing (or put new cams in), change fuel delivery, possibly port the heads etc. to really get significant gains. Unless the heads outflow the intake system and have cams to match, you'll be chasing your tail to a degree. It would have been really foolish for Ferrari to build an engine with another 100hp of potential and then strangle it with simple bolt on intake components. Maybe they did, but I kind of doubt it...That stuff is all designed as a system. If it were that easy to extract more power out of the engine, they wouldn't have swapped to itb's, added a 5th intake valve, increased the displacement and built a complicated valved exhaust for the 355 to get another 60hp. They'd have just put an intake on and called it done.
Maybe modify something like this and weld it inside the airbox is what I was thinking. Either trim one side off so it can fit or leave it intact with a slight mandrel bend so it points down towards the filter. Blox Racing Velocity Stack 2 5 inch Silver Aluminum Universal | eBay
You guys are giving Ferrari WAY too much credit. This was an era where cars were made more by bean pushers then engineers. Throw Italian cars into the mix and how many other 90's era Italian cars are still on the road and not recycled into soup cans now. I honestly think Ernie has a nice package he's working on. More folks that try different things the faster we will get there. We need to do more actual hands on work. Thats where the power comes from. No pain no gain. After this test with Ernies manifold I have a set ready to bolt on. Making some fuel rail fittings now to make rail pressure adjustable instead of that vacuum thingy. I do feel a little porting or bigger valves, possibly a reground cam will help with spinning it up higher for that hidden power. My personal likes is a nice powerband for drivability rather then all out top HP. Not too many times I run at redline here on the 405 during rush hour
I talked with a guy who made velocity stacks for the inlets to the MAFs. He ran the Vstacks plus cone filters. Dyno tested them and picked up an additional +5hp to the wheels, on a bone stock intake manifold, and bone stock TBs. Yeah I know it's pretty hard to believe Ferrari left that much power on the table. After having witnessed in person the kind of power a f119 produces with ITBs (AndyH's 348), reground cams, and an 8750rpm rev limiter. Plus another 348 (Maxwell's) with a complete custom intake system, from the air boxes back, standalone ecu and a 9200rpm rev limit, that bone stock f119 long block made 340hp@8000rpm to the WHEELS on a Dyno Dynamics, aka "the heart breaker". Those two cars proved to me, without a shadow of doubt, that Ferrari indeed left 100hp+ on the table when it comes to the f119. My modified plenum is still in the experimental stage. I am optimistic that it will yield good results once a final ecu tune has been achieved. How much power? The final judge will be the dyno.
Good thinking. The only real way to know is to test it. Like Tim said, the more guys we have experimenting with different things the faster the 348 Brotherhood can progress with getting our f119 engines to reach their full potential. It's a team effort.
Yeah, with reground cams. That's going a little deeper into the engine. If Maxwell's was a stone stock 348 engine including cams, I'd say you have something to work with, though...Once you start swapping cams, aftermarket ecu etc. you're going to unlock potential, yes, but not really potential Ferrari could tap due to having to pass emissions from the factory. Do I believe there's more potential in there? Absolutely, but not much while keeping it emissions (sniffer, not visual) legal and with just bolt-ons. Maybe 10-20hp, but not 100hp.
Maxwell's was a bone stock long block. Stock cams, stock heads, stock followers (shim on bucket), stock valves and springs, stock pistons, stock rods, stock crank. Everything else bolted to the outside of it was custom or modified. I just had a long chat with AndyH, and he told me the last time he had his car on the rollers it made similar power to Steve's 348 on the stock cam grind. I think he said Steve's car was about +4hp more than his. Andy did say that he has not dyno'd his car since he put in the new cam grid. But to your point, he does have his engine idle set to around 1200-1300 rpm to keep it from stalling, so that won't pass emission. Anyway the power is there to be found. I'm gonna keep experimenting with the StoogeWerkz plenum to see what it can do. If it yields results I'm happy with I'll stick with it. If not then I may have to look into getting Maxwell's intake system, or run ITBs like Andy.
I started my 348 induction modification program. I will post the pix of the dyno and additional pics when I have a little more time to fgure it out.. I have a 94 348 Spyder. I have resonated test pipes and a magnaflow muffler and exhaust tips. On my "before" Dyno on Wed. at Competizione I pulled 294 Hp and 245 torque. I have now removed the old headers replacing them with Fabspeed (thanks Yellow Compass). The throddle bodies are in route to maxbore in Fla. I am installing two 355 air cleaners with modified intake hoses, modified MAF's ported and polished intake runners and plenum. New injectors (thanks Ernie). When finished I plan to do some mapping and then a "after" Dyno. So, my 1994 348 has 294 HP not the 312 advertised. It is also not new. Any constuctive comments welcome as are ideas.
Actually, if the drive train loss is only -8% you are probably closer to 320hp at the crank. 320hp - 8% = 294.4hp at the hubs. That is power to the hubs not at the crank so it will be lower. You have a VERY healthy engine. It's too bad they charge so much for baseline pulls, other wise you could do a pull after each mod to see what gains it got you. Anyway, your base line is really strong. I'm looking forward to seeing your progress.
There's a Dynapack in the Bel Air area that I've used before and plan to use in the next few weeks that charges $75 for 3 pulls if somewhere else is charging an arm and a leg.
Don't get bogged down with absolute dyno numbers. It's more about being relative to your modifications. We can argue over beers who's' engine makes more HP or lb.ft. later or let the track performance tell us in "observed" power numbers. Just know that Dynapaks produce higher values than Dynojets or Mustangs. Stay with the same machine if you can. Try to stay with similar ambient conditions also. This is tougher. One thing these machines cannot measure is the acceleration curve. So, you might have a small gain in engine output, but the throttle, the feel on the street/track and the timer show something else entirely. For all the mods on my car, I have about 18 to 23 HP to show for it. But drive that the and it's a world of difference from stock. I have had 355 owners tell me it's almost as fast at their cars, and that's with 800 rpm less in rev range. Our engines do produce torque.
