I ordered a Fabspeed Cup Air Intake from Dan at Vivid Racing at a great price. It came in Tuesday -- fast shipping as usual from Vivid Racing. I downloaded the installation instructions and thought "I can do this.".

The time estimate on the instructions was 2 hours. It took me about 2.5 hours to do the install. Anyone can download the instruction PDF from Fabspeed website. I'll just mention the things that slowed me down and weren't covered in the instructions.

1) When removing the Y-pipe make sure that the hose clamps are *really* loose. I loosened them until I could spin them around the hose, but that didn't provide enough give to wiggle the Y-pipe out of its three hose connections. So, loosen those suckers until there's a good gap between clamp and hose.

2) I had a heck of time getting the air flow sensor housings off of the stock air box. The torx screws came out easily, but there was an O-ring around each housing that was practically fused to the wall of the tube. The housings are all plastic, so a BFH was too risky. It seemed no amount of twisting and wiggling would free those things. I finally figured that I could gently push from inside the air box at the same time as I pulled, and eventually they broke free.

3) When re-installing the Y-pipe note that the pegs on the bottom of the Y-pipe index to the two holes with rubber grommets on top of the heat shield.

The car runs and sounds great. Power increase is noticeable. But the sound of the beast sucking in air at WOT is intoxicating.

 

how about a pic or two?

 

let's see if my attachments came through

 

nice

 

Good job - thanks for the write-up. Notice Fabspeed still calls it a CAI...but no longer a Cold Air Intake, now it's a Cup Air Intake - must have had trouble finding that cold air, especially in Texas

 

The 997 Cup intake seals tight up against the decklid thereby ensuring that the engine is ingesting cool outside air and not any hot air present in the engine bay as is the case with the Fabspeed part. Certainly not trying to rain on your parade, but the Fabspeed part is not a cai like the cup or stock Porsche part.

 

+1 ^^ what he said

 

Sorry, vick57, but must agree with pwdrhound and kwiksliver. This Fabspeed piece has been around for four years or so, and sucks in hotter-than-ambient air. That is s-l-o-w-e-r. The apparent performance increase you sense is probably louder (and admittedly better) intake sounds.
I do apologize for the buzzkill, but, physics being what they are, the unavoidably raised IAT due to the Fabspeed CAI means less power, thus decreased performance.
As far as I can tell, no one in the world, except Fabspeed, has ever been able to produce honest, objective data proving even one more h.p., or one more ft.lb. directly attributable to this device. If such proof exists, I stand corrected.

 

+ 1,000,000

 

Best mod at this point is to remove this "cup" intake unless sound matters more than power.

 

I'm disappointed in Vivid for still pushing these on people.

 

To eliminate the housing that Porsche developed seems very backwards to me and instead, to protect the air intake temps from ambient engine bay heat is just straight up stupid IMO.
The stock housing holds and seals the back lid with a fan (when necessary) that pulls in external ambient air.


I recently replaced my B&M filter back to OEM due to complications to oil in the filter. You now have two oiled cone filters.


Question: now that you have purchased and installed this intake, what's your feedback?


I noticed better intake sound with my BMC but, no performance increase.

 

+1000

 

And the drop in filters are a waste of money too. Amazing that the Porsche intakes are engineered that well.

 

Agreed!!!
I'd return and see if you can get your money back.