From the very beginning, we were big on making sure people knew that our BRZ/FR-S cold air intakes were safe, wouldn't throw check engine lights, and/or need a tune. These were very important items to hit on as there are many myths surrounding Cold Air Intakes. Some of these myths are, intakes cause CEL's (Check engine lights), lose power, only make cool sounds, and require ECU tuning or require ECU re-learning to get the benefits from it. We spent a ton of time on the forums, phones, and in person, saying the same thing over and over again, ensuring customers knew our intake was safe and made the HP we claimed. After we spent all that time teaching, you may be wondering why we are making an intake that purposely goes against all those things. More power of course!

ECU Tuning Required!

Having a free flowing intake system is very important when trying to get the most power from the BRZ/FR-S engine in normally aspirated form. The OEM throttle body, as well as the inlet hose, are already 3.0" connections so it only makes sense to make an intake system that is also made using 3.0" tubing! This is why we made the PERRIN 3.0" intake, so that there would be a perfect 3" tube from the air filter, to the intake manifold. Which would create the least restrictive cold air intake possible. Using the larger tubing, does requires an ECU retune in order to take full advantage of its 3.0" size. Due to ECU needing recalibration for this kind of part, we waited to release this until we felt that there were enough tuners to be able to support it.

Like always, we will have supporting tunes that are specific to the 3.0" PERRIN intake system. That means, we will have Stage 1, 2, and 3 tunes in 91 and 92 octane fuel, with stock intake, regular PERRIN cold air intake, and PERRIN 3.0" cold air intake. One thing we are going to do differently than before, is provide all customers and tuners with the intake calibration! We are doing this to help support the intake and make sure that everyone has the best chance to get a proper tune on their car. Click the link below to download the Excel Spreadsheet with this data.

This 3.0" intake does NOT replace the regular PERRIN cold air intake for the BRZ/FR-S. That intake is still necessary to have for those looking for more HP without being forced to have a custom ECU tune.

Dyno Proven Horsepower

As we said, the most important reason for making this part is to add some power to your car. The question is, how much power is this really worth? Does it make more HP than the regular PERRIN CAI?

Our first test that we did was on a totally stock FR-S. Like always, we did 10 or so runs to get the oil temps up to normal operating temperature. After the HP of the car settled out, we swapped to the regular PERRIN BRZ/FR-S cold air intake and did some more runs. During these tests, the ECU was NOT tuned and was running all factory mapping. We then swapped to the PERRIN 3.0" intake, and ONLY changed the MAF scaling (the map that calibrates the MAF sensor) in the ECU. Meaning, that we didn't do any other tuning like adding timing, changing cam timing, leaning out the AFR, or anything like that, which would add more HP. As you can see, the below comparison shows that the 3.0" is less restrictive at redline and actually adds some low end HP! This setup isn't going to be very common, but we did this to help build the MAF scaling/calibration for all the other upcoming tunes.

The next test we did, was testing it against the more common setup, which we call Stage 2. Stage 2 consists of a 2.5" over pipe, 2.5" front pipe with cat, 2.5" catback exhaust, and an ECU tune that is specific to all those parts. Optionally, the Stage 2 setup can have an intake system added to it as well. Our PERRIN Stage 2 tune, changes the redline to 7900 RPM, which is important to know as the larger intake carries the HP gains all the way to redline. In the Stage 2 testing we are showing below, we tested PERRIN Stage 2 with the regular PERRIN intake (MAF re-calibrated in ECU tune) versus the 3.0" PERRIN intake (MAF re-calibrated in ECU tune). As you can see, the PERRIN 3.0" intake makes more power across the whole RPM band. The gains in HP are a decent 3-6HP change OVER the regular PERRIN cold air intake, which is pretty awesome! And this is with the stock header, and front pipe with a cat!

In the next dyno proving session, we decided to test the 3.0" intake on our Stage 3 setup. The Stage 3 setup consists of the 2.5" over pipe, 3.0" front pipe with cat, 3.0" catback exhaust, and an ECU tune that is specific to all those parts. What we found with Stage 3, is we were starting to hit the limits of air flow with the stock FA20 engine. We could get almost the same HP from the Stage 3 setup with stock intake as we could with the Stage 2 setup with the 3.0" intake. Also on the Stage 3 setup, the regular PERRIN cold air intake didn't make much of a change in HP over the stock air box. What we did find is that running a full 3.0" system (intake and exhaust) made the most HP we ever saw from a normally aspirated FR-S with a stock header and catted front pipe.

In the above test, we ran the Stage 3 setup with the stock intake against the Stage 3 setup with the PERRIN 3.0" intake. The 3.0" intake makes the biggest different in the midrange where it gains 4 Wheel HP, and from 6800 to redline gaining 4-5 Wheel HP. Another cool finding is that it narrows the torque dip slightly making it even less noticeable!

In all these situations, you can see how the 3.0" intake makes more power than the normal PERRIN cold air intake and the stock air box, when properly tuned for. For those that are considering getting an ECU tune (like our ECUTEK setup), still have not purchased an intake system, and are looking to get the more HP from your FA20 engine, we highly recommend getting the PERRIN 3.0" intake over the regular PERRIN intake.