PracWorks Carbon intake manifold review first impressions

It's been a while since I got some work done on the car and although the handling part of my setup probably makes the biggest difference, I've always hoped to improve the naturally aspirated performance of the engine. Unfortunately, being a relatively low production car with a bespoke platform, the costs of R&D to produce products for the S2000 for all motor power would be much higher which results in the offerings of products being either limited or not delivering much results for the money.

It's well known that many exhausts and exhaust manifolds routinely lose power or make low single digit gains when tested on the S2000, so most owners tend to just buy them for weight savings. The offerings on the intake side of things include the usual bored out or bigger throttle bodies, intake systems and individual throttle bodies (ITB) but none of these make significant gains in power on the F22C. ITB's cost big money and require a standalone ECU which brings  the bill pretty close to 5 digit while generally being more effort to maintain from a tuning standpoint. Intake systems and throttle body mods don't make much gains even after tuning and most owners say they are happy with just a few hp gain (if any!). 

This is how my engine bay has pretty much always looked

 That massive hunk of carbon is the Password JDM carbon intake and when tuned it did get some small gains so I pretty much left the intake side of things like this for many years since I did not want to get CEL issues or stuck throttle plates from a throttle body mod. I ruled out ITB as well due to the high cost and the maintenance required. A reasonably priced off the shelf intake manifold solution did not exist since the options that were available were mostly unsuitable for NA setups causing performance loss at the mid range which would be bad news for track performance. 

I then came across the PracWorks Carbon intake manifold for the K series which seemed to deliver excellent gains at a reasonable price point.

I reached out to PracWorks Carbon and started discussing on the possibility of a such an item being made available for the S2000. After some back and forth on dimensions, design, potential interest level and protoyping, PracWorks Carbon delivered this quality item to me for fitment on my ride!

Here's my video review that I did

The finish of the product and quality looks amazing in person and my iphone camera resolution does not do it justice. The pre-preg carbon fibre and billet machining are top notch quality so far the looks and quality its already worth every cent a showpiece. However, this has not been made as a pretty paperweight and here's why:

Looking into the inside of the plenum you find velocity stacks on the runners to increase airflow speed

The quality finish on inside of the runners  and the tapering of the runners towards the head all help to keep airspeed up

The massive plenum is 6 litres in volume a welcome upgrade as the stock S2000 intake manifold is restrictive and limits power. When I placed a 1.5 litre drink bottle for a size comparison, you can see how the plenum absolutely dwarfs the bottle.

Can't wait to get the result of tuning this on the dyno which will happen pretty soon so keep a look out for me reporting back with the gains I hopefully am able to realize. Wish me luck!

Update: 

I did some comparison to the stock intake manifold:

Weight: Both stock and PracWorks intake manifold weigh in around 4.5kg.

Runner lengths : stock manifold is about 15.5 cm or about 6 inches, PracWorks is about 12.5 cm or about 5 inches so the PracWorks is about 1 inch shorter than stock

Had a few queries from pre DBW S2000 owners on the IAC fitment and PracWorks kindly shared how the IAC is fitted to this manifold

Thanks to:

PracWorks Carbon for taking a chance for S2000 production

Photo Credit:

matcanyon