First off…I want to thank Ray Fong over at Weapon-R for making this review possible. His customer support was great as he answered all of my questions and concerns quickly. He also sent out longer tubing when I notified him the tubing supplied in the kit was too short.
Customer Support = A+
Installation of the intake was very simple. Except for the short hoses all of the parts went together smoothly. The longer hoses were in the mail the next day. The intake itself was a very nice piece and along with the heat shield are polished aluminum. The hose clamps are stainless steel and the 3” silicone adapters made for a snug fit. The MAF sensor was easily installed into the bung using the OEM screws with no fitment problems. I did have a non-issue with the heat shield not lining up properly, but when the response I received from Ray cleared everything up and it fit fine. Total installation time was about 25mins.
Installation & Fit and Finish = B-
After resetting the ECU I took the truck for a spin. The intake did not make anymore noise than the stock unit at idle and low speeds. However, at WOT it came alive! It just sounds like a throaty rumble. No extra whistles or rattles. Just GROWL! No complaints in the noise department. Even my wife liked how it sounded. Initial throttle response seemed to be livelier, but that could easily be said anytime after you reset the ECU. My Buttdynometer felt no noticeable power difference between the stock and Weapon-R intake at any speed. One area that I could tell a difference in was gas mileage. It was definitely worse
Roadworthiness: B
So now onto the goods or the bads…the DYNO NUMBERS! I apologize right away for having the Speed (mph) on the bottom axis not RPM!
I took the truck down to AZ Dyno Chip for the testing. Thirty minutes on the dyno costs $60. Needless to say, you can manage a lot of runs in that amount of time. I reset the ECU before each set of runs and ran the runs in 3rd gear.
The first runs were with the Weapon-R intake because, well, it was already on the truck. The truck sat for at least 45mins while I waited for some dyno tuning to finish up on a nitrous Mustang. The truck was strapped in after that and allowed to warm up slightly. We did about 7mins of runs with that intake then shut her down and I swapped that intake for the stock one. It took about 15mins to swap out then I ran another 7mins or so with the stock intake. Unfortunately, I had to operate the throttle during the runs and yes, it is a BI@TCH the keep the transmission from down shifting.
The runs I included in the chart were the best runs from each intake. As you can see from the dyno numbers the Weapon-R intake was having some serious issues at the lower RPM range less than 5200RPM. The Weapon-R did have a nice spike in torque after that, but at a cost of lower HP numbers. The dyno operator noticed the strange readings right away and even repositioned the clamp on the coil, but all of the runs with this intake had the same results. Check out the Air/Fuel at the bottom as well. This is just another thing to scratch your heads over. Ray believes the venturi created by the double pipe caused the MAF to read incorrectly and suggested that I remove the internal pipe before the MAF sensor. I will do this in the future and will post any results that I come up with.
Dyno Performance = F
So in conclusion I would not purchase this intake in the form it is in now. Even overlooking the lower RPM funky readings, the mid range RPM readings are only moderately better and upper RPM readings are slightly worse.