what ever happened to undercoverangie???

She used/still does work there. that's her car on the link you posted.

I thought they were an approved vendor for a while?

 

Has anybody ever used the Under Cover Performance intake manifold? Just saw this today while browsing... Definitely pricey, but looking at it, it has to be an improvement over the factory intake manifold.

Non-Vendor Link

Definitely beautiful... but idk about $1400 worth of beautiful... Btw, i would remove non-vendor link before you get put in time out.:frown:

 

Btw, i would remove non-vendor link before you get put in time out.:frown:

Thanks for the heads up, I forgot about that rule

 

Angie's still around... mostly on Facebook these days. I guess she got tired of being slammed here.

So...hmmm... so many claims... so little testing or proof. If you are looking for a pretty and shiny piece of metal to put under your hood... I'd say that this is a fine piece of metal.

When pressed about flow specifications, Undercover Performance went undercovers. Their "10-15%" better airflow claims is based on math... not on actual testing (that we know). "Better airflow" doesn't really say much about how that airflow is distributed between the cylinders and Undercover Performance won't share test data (if it even exists). My guess is that they did no testing beyond throwing it on to Angie's car and seeing if it would blow up. It didn't blow up (that we know of)... so it does the job. There is that outstanding question as to whether or not it does a better or worse job as compared to the stock manifold or a manifold that has been PnP'd and that question will never be answered by the folks trying to sell you this $1350 piece of sheet metal (yes, it is made from sheet metal).

When pressed for test specs, Angie's answer was, "No other company provides test data, so we aren't going to either". If I'm playing devil's advocate, that answer sounds a lot like "we didn't run any objective tests to actually see what our intake does and you should stop asking."

So... we did.. and to my knowledge they haven't exactly exploded with orders. This is definitely a "buy at your own risk" purchase. Angie, who works for Undercover has a 500 whp stock turbo Genesis Coupe and she will endorse this product with the same zeal as she defended her HP output claims on her setup.

 

Very interesting, I appreciate the insight. I'm open to alternatives and interested to see the difference in power that can be made vs. the stock manifold. Looking at all the other comparable turbo 4-cylinder platforms, it seems that the Genesis gets the most complex intake with what appears to be the worst flowing "plenum" (if you could call it that).

 

Here's what I do know about this manifold: http://www.gencoupe.com/2-0t-discussion-2013-up/232114-undercover-tuning.html

Snoopy was supposed to get test results from Garth, the head fabricator at Undercover and post what data he could to this thread. Of course, nothing ever happened and Snoopy never posted the data (not Snoopy's fault).

Now, what I would say is that this is a pretty piece of metal. Given that the pictures are of a one off prototype and not a production run manifold, I cannot say that the quality on a production run would be as good, if there is even such a thing as a production run of this particular manifold.

So, with all that said, there is the potential that this manifold actually performs better than the stock manifold; however, there is also the potential that it performs worse. Since no testing data has been shared, we are left to our own means to decide whether this is worth $1350.

I will tell you that MAPerformance does a PnP of our stock manifold and if you get the manifold port matched to the engine, that the actual flow of the manifold is statistically even across all ports. Our manifold is perfectly able to flow well enough to support over 500 whp if it is properly prepared. PnP of our manifold with a ceramic coating costs less than 1/2 the cost of this manifold. Either manifold would have to be port matched anyway to achieve the best balance. So... it's up to you to decide whether having a shiny piece of metal that may or may not do what the manufacturer claims it will do is worth $1350.00.

 

PnPs suck

The stock IM sucks.

Please stop it

Flow benches are meh at best.

Even a mailbox welded to the stock runners is better than stock.

 

I like it, mailboxes as a plenum, you are quite resourceful!

 

LOL... I'll flow test my mailbox and get back with you... I'm guessing the numbers won't be impressive though.

 

I guess we should, for purposes of full disclosure, let everyone know that ElDominio works for a company in PR that also makes an aftermarket IM. So, from that perspective, ElDominio may be a bit biased in his assessment.

Companies want you to think that your stock parts are crap. You cannot sell an aftermarket part to people who believe that the stock part is as good as anything available on the aftermarket... so yeah... they make some pretty outrageous claims.

The fact is that the stock manifold is used in some pretty big builds. While I won't say that there is no issues with flow (there always is), I'm guessing the stock IM flows better than your mailbox with holes cut in it. It's exaggerations such as these that taint manufacturer claims and make people not want to trust what manufacturers say. It's sad, really because there are some pretty good pieces parts out there that actually do what manufacturer's claim that they do but they kind of blend into the background among all those who make wild claims and don't back up their claims with actual numbers and objective tests.

 

I guess we should, for purposes of full disclosure, let everyone know that ElDominio works for a company in PR that also makes an aftermarket IM. So, from that perspective, ElDominio may be a bit biased in his assessment. .

Sorry, but I don't. I just have seen the results of that damn thing myself, since I am a tuner (freelance)

I wish I had a cut for how many of their IM's I've sold before, but I do it so people can spread around how bad the stock one actually is.

I've posted umpteen million times the results of a car with and without an IM (as in, the only change was the IM), yet, everyone seems to stand by our stock crap.

p.s. my car is still on the stock IM since I live the broke life.

BTW, the cylinder imbalance is meh at best.
Again, my beef with flowbenches is that it doesn't show what happens at positive pressures (since a flowbench can only determine how much air fits throgh somethig, and doesn't show you squat about the dynamics of what is happening with that air.
FROM WHAT I HAVE SEEN, our stock intake manifold turns into **** after ~18psi, relatively quickly.
My theory is that pressurized air starts cavitating quickly inside of it after said pressures, but sadly, I have no real way of proving this, except for noting that after 18psi, the power gains per psi start getting lower and lower, independent of what turbo is being used (which is an obvious factor, but a GT3076R shouldn't give you 7whp/psi after 18psi, and 2whp/psi after 24psi.

 

People REALLY need to get over the cost of things around here. Pay to play, that's the kind of hobby this is. Go look at what parts cost for other cars, it's never cheap. I don't know why people think that just because they bought a cheap car, that it would be cheap to mod too. $1400, if it's a quality manifold that actually works, is a GREAT price.

Recently I found that GReddy made a manifold way back in 2010 but all the cheapos here shunned them due to price, and GReddy scrapped the whole thing.

I've recently been in touch with Hypertune in Australia(go look them up), they make amazing parts but won't touch the Gen, even though I offered them a blank cheque to make me a manifold. They told me maybe in 6 months. Everyone shits on this community because people are so cheap!!

As to Undercover, I agree it's probably a rubbish manifold. But Angie did say her car had a Precision turbo on it, no?

 

i second this.

 

Good companies test before they sell and they don't use their customers as guinea pigs... yanno... unless you are Microsoft. While not all companies publicly publish their results, most companies that do extensive testing on their products do share when asked.

Extensive testing costs money... this is why most small companies that build stuff in their sheet metal shop by welding together a few pieces of sheet metal don't test. They instead install it on a car... do some dyno runs (after making sure all the conditions are perfect for the test car)... and then say, "See... our product makes x HP". What they don't tell you is the number you are really looking for.. that is the one that fixes the problem you were trying to fix in the first place.

In the case of an intake manifold, the stock IM has an unbalanced flow that forces tuners to tune rich to compensate for the high flowing runners. Tuning too rich means robbing the engine of potential HP. By balancing (not even increasing) the flow you enable the tuner to tune the car using leaner settings and not have to worry that cylinder 1 and 4 are going to blow because the overall balance is off.

 

Turbulence is going to affect how much air actually makes it from the IM through the runners and ultimately into the cylinder, but I get what you are saying about how turbulence wouldn't affect just one or two cylinders but all... but it would also exacerbate a small flow imbalance per cylinder as well. So... if you are seeing an 18 AFR on the overall O2 output... the leanest cylinder is running really lean. If you pop an engine, it is most likely going to happen on the #4 cylinder. Why? Because that's where much of the air is going as it slams into the back of the IM and feeds right into the last cylinder. By bringing the overall O2 back into safe ranges you are inevitably flooding the rich cylinders that are being starved of air in an unbalanced system to compensate for the lean cylinders. By flow balancing the IM, you don't have a rich/lean cylinder as all of them are getting the same amount of air... now if you balance the overall AFR, you are assured that none of the cylinders are running lean.

 

18AFR happened on the aftermarket IM....

Did you read my post?

P.S. I never called anyone's intake a mailbox, I just said a mailbox welded to some runners is better than the stock garbage POS

 

Hey guys. I just wanted to chime in on this thread because I have quite a bit of experience with building intake manifolds for the gen.

First of all I would like to introduce myself. My name is Vince and I am the fabricator at Predator Performance and am in no way selling anything so please don't ask me.

After having issues with the fragile plastic IM I engineered and fabricated a dual plenum intake manifold. For those of you who are not familiar with a dual plenum design please do a little research before asking the basic questions.

I choose the design based on the chassis constraints and intended use. The stock IM is actually the worst design I've ever seen, small plenum and bad flow characteristics. With the dual plenum design was able to fit the size runner I calculated and also increase plenum volume while equalizing flow across the 4 runners perfectly. The runners also have a dual taper and a fully rolled edge for maximum velocity.

We have dyno tested this IM with many different setups from stock turbo to 35r with awesome results.

 

I've seen ported manifolds in person (grimspeed) and there is nothing they do to correct the stock IM downfalls. In my opinion porting the head flange to try to port match it has a negative effect on port velocity.

All of the aftermarket single plenum IMs I've seen use much too large of a plenum and due to the space constraints use to short of a runner which moves the power curve too far to the right.

I think I have a few CFD analysis screenshots that show how these different designs actually work. It's very interesting stuff!

The stock IM is only good for stock tunes but quickly shows its weaknesses when the turbo is turned up. We actually saw close to 30whp gain if I remember correctly with just the addition of a bolt on dual plenum over the previous tune. I have the graphs and data if you guys want to see.

Also just because an intake manifold is made from sheet metal it doesn't mean its any less of a quality part. I personally handmade and form my IM from 0.125 sheet and tube extrusions that are custom formed in house. Given proper design you can achieve a very strong product that will not fail from fatigue and have less mass to heatsoak compared to a cast manifold.


Given what the genesis market will pay for an IM it doesn't make any sense to machine anything IE billet flanges and runners. Hell I even put way too much labor intake making mine, takes about 12-15 hours each depending on the batch size.

It's fun making Hyundais fast

 

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