[Genthar]

Ok, here's the writeup that I've done for the AEM Brute force intake. There are also lots of pictures available here, but beware, the images are fairly large. Feel free to ask me any questions you may have, and I'll try to answer to the best of my abilities.

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AEM Brute Force Intake

AEM started in 1987, and quickly became a big player in the import sport compact market with their performance intake systems. Now sporting a large line of products and upgrades, including fuel management systems, fuel rails, tuned intakes, and other goodies for the sport compact market, AEM is bringing it’s expertise to the ever growing truck and SUV market with their Brute Force line of intakes.

I was the lucky winner of an AEM Brute Force intake for the Toyota Tundra 4.7L V-8, through TundraSolutions.com. My contact at AEM was their Internet Director, David Salvaggio. After some back and forth e-mails and phone calls, the date was set, and I made the short trek to Hawthorne, CA, and the AEM Headquarters.

After meeting David, he gave me a tour of AEM’s main warehouse, distribution, and administrative facility, at the Hawthorne facility, including their prototyping shop area. Their main manufacturing facility is located elsewhere (unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to check that out as well.) Their warehousing facility is quite impressive however. Rows and rows of parts are neatly stacked on the racks while the workers bustle about pulling parts and preparing kits for shipping.

In their prototyping area, they had a new Neon RT Turbo in the early stages of prototyping. The intake tubes were being fitted and spot welded by some of their engineers while they checked for clearances and positioning. In the meantime, in another corner a Mitsubishi Evolution was getting fitted not only with an intake, but one of AEM’s engine management modules. A brand new Dodge Ram 3500 was just having its completed prototype removed, while two other special vehicles were housed in this area. These special vehicles were Larry Ragland’s pre-runner that he uses for the Baja 1000, and the AEM/DriverFX.com Civic, driven by Stephan Papadakis, currently the fastest FWD Sport Compact in the world with an with a best e.t of 8.12 and a best mph of 184 MPH! The company’s PRO RWD drag car runs 6.90s at 208 mph!

AEM’s prototyping goes beyond just fitting the pipes to the engine compartment. At their facility, they have their own dynamometer where they test the vehicles out under different loads and conditions to better understand the performance curve at locations other than peak and W.O.T. They also purchase and test their competitor’s products and ensure that their model outperforms their competitions models. Each model is prototyped and tested repeatedly until they are satisfied with their performance before any model is released. Also during testing, they determine if their throttle-body spacer will be effective on the vehicle. They admitted however, that probably nobody in the industry really knows why a throttle body spacer works on some vehicles but not on others. They include one in their kits where their testing has shown it helps.

Quality control is fairly tight. During production, samples from the current production run are not only tested against a jig to ensure that the bends and lengths are correct, they are also fitted on actual vehicles to make sure that they fit properly. The Brute Force intakes also come with a Limited Lifetime warranty, and are all 100% made in the USA. The intakes are constructed from CNC mandrel-bent 6061 aluminum with TIG-welded fittings and brackets.

AEM uses Aluminum rather than plastic due to the way they design their intakes. The whole idea is to get more air/fuel to the engine. That’s the way you make more power. AEM’s engineers realized that sound waves are compression waves, and that timing and tuning the intake can cause the peak of the wave to hit the intake valves, causing more air to be pushed into the chamber. Plastic tends to absorb the sound waves, reducing the compression, however aluminum reflects the sound waves, keeping them moving along until it gets to the engine. That’s the secret to how AEM’s intakes work. Rather than just reducing restriction and allowing more air to flow, they actually tune the intake to get those compression waves to go where and when they want them to go.

The tour done, we grabbed Greg Nakano, one of their engineers, and headed off to R&D Dyno to do the testing and installation on my Tundra. They chose the third party dyno rather than their own facility to provide a neutral testing ground.

Pulling in, and strapping down the truck, Greg proceeded to do a few trial runs before recording the three main pulls that would form the baseline values. I asked about their dyno procedure and here’s what I got:

1) They don’t move the vehicle once it’s strapped down. They’ve found that just repositioning the vehicle on the dyno can give different readings even without modifications.
2) They perform the testing with the hood up and fans blowing toward the engine compartment to better simulate the airflow that you would encounter while driving. This makes sense to me because while you’re driving, air is flowing through the engine compartment via your forward motion.
3) They perform 3 pulls before and after to reduce any random hot runs.
4) At their facility their dyno can do load testing so that the whole curve can be seen from low to high RPM, different throttle positions, and under different loads. Unfortunately it’s not a Dynojet, so people are less accepting of those results, than one done off of the more familiar Dynojet dynamometer.

The three baseline runs produced an average HP peak of 202.1@5000 RPM, and an average TQ peak of 267.9@3500 RPM. Mechanically my truck is still a bone stock 4.7L iForce V-8, with the automatic transmission.

The installation took around 20 minutes, and probably would have been done in 15, if I hadn’t kept sticking my camera in Greg’s way, while taking pictures. The installation is very straightforward, and I imagine your average shade-tree mechanic could easily have it done in 30-45 minutes. The kit comes with all the parts needed to do the install, including some longer replacement vacuum lines to reach the new intake. Some of the connectors are cushioned to allow the engine to flex and move about without flopping the intake about. The installation procedure is well written out in the instructions included with the kit

With the installation done, Greg again made a few trial runs, partially to let the ECU figure out what’s going on, and partially to make sure that he did it the same way. And again, ripped off 3 runs.

The three post install runs produced an average HP peak of 208.9 HP@5000 RPM, and an average TQ peak of 270.0@3500 RPM, good for +7 HP, and +2 lb/ft over stock. Not too bad! The sound however is incredible! Under light to moderate throttle, there’s not much difference in sound over stock. Freeway speeds, under normal throttle is the same quiet engine, though with the Brute Force, you can barely hear sort of a sucking sound under light acceleration. However, start to stick your foot in it, and the Brute Force starts to come alive with a snarling growl that quickly builds to a roar that really grabs your attention. My butt-dyno tells me that there’s not a drastic difference in feel before and after, however, the power does seem to come on more quickly and smoothly versus stock, and the revs seem to climb more quickly towards that red-line when I punch it. Overall I’m very pleased with the intake.

I would really like to thank David and Greg for their time and patience in answering all of my questions, and of course AEM and TundraSolutions.com for the intake, and R&D Dyno for the use of their facility.

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Some answers to questions from the TS Members and some that I thought may be of interest:

There isn’t a Tundra V6 application right now. Greg seemed to think that the Tacoma version might fit, but he wasn’t sure.

The graphs from the Dynojet don’t go any lower because the truck loses traction when you start lower (Greg tried a few times and just couldn’t get it to stay hooked up.) I asked about possibly getting copies of the engineering test runs on their dyno (rather than the ones from the Dynojet) and he said that they might not have them anymore, but it would be simple to re-test a truck and make new ones. Their dyno allows them to perform load testing, which would allow them to get the full RPM range of values, however, it’s not a Dynojet, and they’ve often run into some resistance because:
1) It’s theirs, and not an independent third party.
2) “it’s not a Dynojet like everyone else uses.”
They were going to look into the possibility of doing this and getting me copies of the runs so we can better see the whole power curve.

The ECU Reset period – With a MAF the system knows immediately that the airflow has changed and changes the map fairly quickly. With some of the older MAP designs, it could take a while for the system to remap for the new flow.

They choose vehicles like all other manufacturers do – based on popularity. Their engineers and design teams try to keep their ear to the industry and the consumers, so they can create products as the demand appears. A vehicle that may be popular, but with no demand for tuner parts (say a Buick Regal or something like that) would probably also not have anything designed for it. After all they are a business. Currently for the Brute Force line, they’re working on models from 2000 – 2004. After that, they will go back and start creating versions for pre-2000 model vehicles.