Forge Twintake Mk2 Leon Cupra TFSI

I have recently fitted Forge Motorsport's latest twin inspired product, the Twintake and I want to share my thoughts on the kit.

Those in the know will know I've had more than my fair share of intakes on my Mk2 Leon Cupra TFSI over the past year or so. I've not been entirely satisfied with some of the other solutions available and have tried a few different kits, as well as stock inc Carbonio, Dbilas intake and the ITG Maxogen foam intake. Forge have arrived fairly late to the market, but is their solution any better than the competition in my view?

First I'll make some observations about what I've ran before and then move on to my feelings about the Forge kit:

CARBONIO COLD AIR INDUCTION



The Carbonio is nothing more than a cold air feed to the stock airbox/engine cover, the resulting advantage is quite small. The car has a bit more of an induction sound to it, coupled up with a good aftermarket panel filter such as a Green or K&N then a few extra hp can be delivered a little more torque but overall the improvements are minimal and mostly aesthetic under the bonnet. High power Stg2+ cars will ultimately suffer from the restrictive airflow the stock airbox can provide. Drivability is probably much better but it will shave off quite a bit of performance on Stg2+ cars.

DBILAS INTAKE



The Dbilas replaces the stock airbox/engine cover, and is the first proper intake kit I tried, it utilised a die-casted airbox in the stock location above the radiator. This airbox has a small panel filter enclosed, which did seem a little restrictive yet it did remain quite cool and produced a healthy increase in power, at least 15hp on my Stg2+ setup.

While it didn't really offer much more than a slightly louder induction sound compared to the Carbonio it did produce some brief waste-gate sound when lifting off boost.

I wasn't a fan of the fitment on the Dbilas kit, it was designed primarily for the Mk V Golf as were many early intakes and there wasn't much flexibility in it for fitment to other applications such as the Cupra. The take off pipe was poorly located and this in-turn caused the airbox to sit too high under the bonnet this in turn lead to it being sat at the wrong angle for the correct airflow. The kit being almost entirely cast was quite heavy in comparison to other intake kits.

ITG MAXOGEN INTAKE



The ITG Maxogen intake kit has probably been the kit of choice for most Mk2 Leon Cupra owners of late and I got myself one last autumn. This is widely thought of as one of the better developed solutions. ITG have engineered a good fitment on the most part avoiding some of the problems with other kits that were primarily designed for the VWs, this was designed with the Cupra in mind from the outset.

The power increases with the ITG are very good indeed, my own Stage 2+ Cupra gained at least 20hp some have seen much more depending on the remap used. Having had this intake on a few months I can say it works very well delivering performance, but it has some downsides I've found difficult to live with. Its very loud, now I don't mind a nice induction noise but the open foam filter sock is extremely loud. Drowning out even my APR exhaust which is no mean feat, it might draw some unwanted attention its pretty east to tell your gunning it for example.

Its also not what I would call a pretty intake, and is what could be described as a little heath robinson in its presentation, some would argue its function over form. But then if we are honest we all still like this stuff to look good as well as purposeful, especially when were parting with the thicker end of 300 notes.



The large Maxogen foam filter is crammed in front of the battery box and an impromptu airbox arrangement is made using a foam divider. This to me doesn't really work that well, again its not very tidy and I am not convinced it blocks the intake from the engine bay temps quite as well as it could, in fact many people have modified it with ducting from the fog light enclosure. But this in turn also allows more moisture ingress directly to the filter, especially if you were to accidentally go through deep puddles or travel on very wet roads.

Having lived with it for several months I didn't like the way the turbo warbled even under the lightest of loads with my main concern being how laggy the car felt unless you nailed it everywhere. I went to Oulton Park earlier this year for a track day the ITG made sense when it was screaming around the race circuit near the top of the rev band, in fact that was the one of the times it really excelled.

However under general driving conditions I felt it under-performed. As an example, my daily commute is mainly made up of town driving with some fast A-road if the rush hour traffic allows.

I found the car felt laboured at slower speeds and was slow on the uptake unless you were to drop it a cog or two. This is something I rarely had to do before, the car would pull strongly from low revs with little effort and lets be honest when your in the rush hour you tend to prefer to just let it drag itself along in one or two gears.

ITG's focus on racing experience has developed a kit that provides exceptional high end performance and power but it isn't an all round package that I personally believe a fast road package requires and I found the driving experience with the ITG more tiresome as a result.

I also found that fuel economy suffered considerably with the ITG fitted compared to the previous kits probably because I was having to stir the gearbox more often around town to get the car to sparkle a bit more.

Forge Twintake review see next post.

FORGE TWINTAKE

The reason I made this post, to report on my latest intake findings.

Intakes usually utilise a single air feed from either the stock location just above the radiator or from the nearside wheel arch. Where the Forge Twintake differs is obviously apparent as it utilises two enclosed air-boxes taking air feeds from twin locations hence its name.

I believe the idea Forge are using is not so much to increase overall air volume, as far too much air volume passing the MAF (air-flow meter) at speed can actually contribute to cause misfires and poor performance. But overall I feel the goal is to sustain a level of air volume while keeping the all important air temperatures to a minimum.



The temperature of the airflow is an important function of an intake kit when you think about it, because when turbo engines gulp in lumps of cooler denser air they tend to perform that much better. The colder air provides a denser charge resulting in more power and more torque.

By using two air-boxes in this way Forge's aim is to ensure the car has a plentiful supply of cool/ambient air from both locations and another benefit of running two air feeds is reducing any restriction to the airflow into the turbo, but the point at which the twin feeds become a single feed probably swirls the air flow up enough that it passes the MAF at a manageable rate so avoiding the issue I mentioned above.

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect at first, the concept of two air-boxes seems an odd one to grasp but having driven the car quite a bit now I have been surprised by how well the Twintake performs and I believe it works very efficiently.



I will attempt to explain why I think this way.

I didn't just want to fit this kit go for a drive and give my feedback, I wanted to live with it for a little while hence why I left it for a couple of weeks before writing this report.

I've now had the opportunity to test it in varying temperatures with weather of late varying from being cold to quite pleasantly warm not to mention volcanic dust I also road tested it under different driving conditions such as my daily commute to work, trips on the motorway plus A/B road blasts into the peak district for a bit of fun.

The on-road performance is exceptionally good, one of my gripes with the ITG was the poor low-speed balance it offered as I mentioned earlier. The Twintake doesn't suffer from this at all, it has manages successfully to keep air pressure sustained so the turbo remains easy to spool up. The benefit being when in slow traffic the car doesn't feel so gutless and is quicker on the uptake.

Its also quieter during normal cruising conditions with little to no turbo warbling when your on and off the throttle.



Outright performance isn't forgotten either, when I got the car out onto the motorways and my favourite roads up into the peak district it really didn't disappoint when on the boil. The power comes in rapidly and the turbo spools both smoothly and quickly with no surging, uptake of revs from the engine as you travel up the gears is quick and effortless too with very little lag.

The induction roar expressed from the Forge both inside the cabin and outside at this point is no less impressive when compared to an ITG, the engine slurps up huge lungfuls of air and the turbo will both squark and whistle in a smile inducing manner.

I have a theory which you may or may not agree with but it makes sense to me. I believe that the Twintake works more conventionally than it would first appear, the primary upper airbox is fitted to the stock air feed location above the radiator and is provided a direct flow of air into the intake via the air scoop that Forge supply, at slower speeds this is directly effective.



When the cars speed increases, the overall air flow at the front of the car is being forced both over the bonnet and also beneath the car. This leads in turn to create a low air pressure effect centred on the primary air intake point, the upper front grille.

As speed increases the airflow towards the the car will flow more directly from beneath it, up through the wheel arch and/or directly via the front nearside foglight enclosure into the secondary positioned air scoop so sustaining a regular flow of cool air into the secondary airbox.

Forge have seemingly taken steps to design their kit in such a way that the air flow to the air boxes is both purposely directed and more importantly sustained at all times to provide the all important cold air to increase power and torque across the rev band.



While this provides great performance the dual action of the air flow also makes the driving experience easier to live with at the times when you don't have your right foot buried to the carpet. My fuel economy has greatly improved too with the car getting at least an extra 50 miles compared to what it was getting with the ITG based on similar road usage and a full tank of fuel.

I can't say at the moment what increase in power the kit provides as I've not had it dynoed with the Forge kit fitted, but judging by the on-road performance I expect no less of a result compared to other intakes. So I would be confident of saying upto 20hp increase on a Stg2+ car such as mine.

This is also a tidy looking intake kit, and while you fully expect it to be a complicated setup. Its a well thought out and executed idea and fits very well on the most part.

The only gripe while fitting the kit was positioning a nut and bolt that wasn't provided in the kit which is required to hold the second air scoop in place onto the wing. Forge have utilised a hole that is already there in the Cupra's nearside wing to hold the air scoop into position. There is very little space to get your hand down around it especially if you have the factory xenons like I do.

The drawbacks being that to replace an indicator or sidelight bulb in the cluster means removal of this tricky secondary air scoop. Its not a massive problem to be fair and the scoop is probably located in the best position it could be.



In addition it would also be possible to fit some ducting from the fog light enclosure up into the scoop, though you have to be mindful of water ingress up into the filters in extremely wet conditions.

The carbon covered air-boxes each contain cotton based cone filters, they look the business when you lift the bonnet, finished off with striking chrome style Forge stickers. The metal pipework is powder coated black and the excellent Forge silicone hoses are also black.

When fitting full intakes to the Cupra you lose the engine cover because it contains the stock air box too and won't go back on when an intake is positioned. It can look a bit ugly under there sans engine cover and the splash of carbon provided by the twintake kit successfully pimps up an otherwise ugly looking space.



This kit was designed for the Leon Cupra too, with Forge selling bespoke kits for each of the main protagonists sharing this platform, ie Golf Ed30 and S3.

Its a pricey kit, coming in at almost £380inc VAT RRP and it might put some off in comparison to the competition but its a well thought out solution and aesthetically the other intakes pale in comparison to it. Performance is superb and I most importantly to me at least, I appear to have found an intake kit I can happily live with day to day.

As always these are just my views and you may or may not agree, but this is why we have choice and what works for you might not work for me.

A pretty simple answer, not saying the ITG is a bad choice but I want to be happy with my car and I wasn't with the ITG.

If the Forge didn't work as well as it does I was already committed to sacrificing power and going back to the stock intake to improve drivability, thats how much I wasn't getting on with the ITG.

Some of us are not looking to post the quickest 0-60 times or quarter miles, I want it to be a good fast road car that in turn doesn't piss me off when I want to just cruise to work or the shops.

I now have an ITG available, of which I open to realistic offers.

Knight_Rider said:

Great write up again Mark,

Seems like you're finally settled on the intake side of things.
Have you managed to or planning to aquire any data such as intake temperatures to see just how effective this kit is? Or has Forge released any?

and in general:

I'm wondering if similar cold air effects can be acheived in a single cone application for example ducting to a 'twin cone' (single cone with the open end as opposed to a closed end). That way I'd have thought you would get smoother airflow and less turbulence than having a two pipes joining with a Y-piece section of tubing.
I feel that with my intake the main concern is the heat being absorbed by the metal turbing that the air is flowing through, making the efforts to source cold air initially pointless!?

Jamie

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I certainly feel more settled with this kit than any other I've had, its worked out well so far and the only step aside from any intake kit now would be to go back to a stock airbox for the sake of good drivability in my opinion. As I say at the end of the report its just my views and I'm not trying to change anyone elses views...this is just my opinion its up to everyone else to have their own views.

Possibly, if I understand your point, surely then even in an open cone solution the air is turbulent inside the engine bay before it it gets drawn into the cone. It must also have more chance of being effected by ambient engine temperature variances too.

The Forge closed cones are funnelling the air more directly. However as I've been led to understand it, the turbulent air actually aids the process, because the MAF has trouble reading the air properly if it rushes by the MAF. APR for example engineered their own MAF enclosure and mapped to it accordingly for their Stg3 kits because the stock setup couldn't deal with the flow rate and caused misfires.

Stg2+ cars will suffer these same problems the more power they seek, so it makes more sense to me at least to have some turbulent air passing across the MAF, too much efficiency can actually be a bad thing. Certainly the on-road results from my perspective show it works well and the ITG in effect uses the same principals by having the bend near the foam cone and the truncated post MAF pipe.

I'm wondering if metal pipework does have as huge a bearing when the car is in motion, air flowing through the intake would also have a counter cooling effect. Turbo temps are controlled by the intercooler that itself is more efficient when under motion and load. When the car is at rest the heat builds up and is conducted into the metals surrounding the heat sources such as from the turbo and ancillary parts. If it was a major concern then heat wrapping is an option, but for most applications I think folks are seeing a problem that doesn't really exist...I certainly don't feel mine holding back.

SteveTDCi said:

good write up but i couldn't justify spending the best part of £400 on an airfilter, I suppose the days of a £100 induction kit are long gone

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Trouble these days is the OEM manufacturers make the cars that complicated that the kits require a lot more to either bypass it or fit in around it. This adds more parts for the tuners to fabricate/source and pushes up costs for everyone else.

Gone are the days when you could just bolt a cone onto the end of the intake and forget it.

Cupra R said:

Have you been able to get any air flow log's Z since fitting this kit? Just wondered how it compared to your ITG log's (if you have any that is)

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I havn't bothered with logs even with the ITG, I didn't need logs to tell me the differences I was looking for as they are very easy to notice just from driving it.

The search for big numbers isn't important to me even that 1hp I pipped you at Awesome

You know as well as me that our APR software doesn't make Revo figures but that suits me just fine. I wanted better day to day drivability, I don't go drag racing, I occasionally do a track day, I enjoy a jaunt out on a fast road but most of the time its my daily driver too and has to take me to work and the shops etc etc.

If the Twintake hadn't delivered a suitable driving experience that I found easier to live with, then the Cupra was going back to the stock intake even if that meant losing 20hp.

Judging by the on-road performance though, the difference at the top-end when I floor it is marginable, maybe logs might show some slight differences but as I say its really not that big a deal for my comparisons even if the car has lost somef power it doesn't bother me.

I believe the ITG is geared up for big performance, as is shown in ITG's expertise in motorsport. It was great at Oulton Park but I just found myself not getting on with it day to day, but its not a bad product, it just doesn't suit my taste.

I want to get the car dyno'd soon and I can compare torque and power to the ITG that way, I think the Forge will likely show more torque in the low to midrange areas as it certainly feels more lively lower down than the ITG, but might not make as much top end as the ITG.

Ami-Jane said:

Good read this!

Do you think those running basically standard or those at Stage 1 would probably be better with the ITG or equivilant (slightly cheaper not having to worry so much about getting X amount of air to the car, petrol consumption etc) but if you're looking at going to stage 2 and above the forge would be the better set up due to the above?

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If your not going Stg2 then I wouldn't be too concerned with a full intake unless you purely want the induction sound. Regardless of power output with an intake you will see some effect on fuel consumption but I have found the ITG to be worse than the Forge.

As I explained above I believe the Forge works slightly more conventionally because of the twin air box arrangement. Yet it still has a great induction noise.

With the main top airbox able to take in a good supply of unrestricted air even when your just cruising about town or rush hour traffic and the secondary lower airbox aiding in airflow when the car is at speed where a large volume of air will be pushed up via the fog light grille.