In my testing I can say that any car going faster than about 11.50 will see a gain with a bigger maf. Usually spoolup is the first thing people notice. This is not to say that you cannot go 9's with a stock maf, it had been done, many times. The question is how fast would same the car go with something better? There are other benefits as well, easy to get a replacment that works at any parts store in the country, better idle, faster spool up, and the tuning advantage that comes with the translator and extender chips. I have seen faster cars pick up 3 to 7 PSI boost with the SAME waste gate setting just from changing the maf sensor out. So the restriction is evident there. Is this a must have item, nope, is this an item that will make the car run better, easier to tune and give some benefit, yes.
hope this helps,
Mike
I'd agree with Mike on this one. Just because a car can go 9's on a stock maf really isn't telling the whole story. You put 800HP combo behind a stock maf and sure, it'll likely run the 9's... Question should be, what would that same car do with a 3.5LS1 maf run and changing nothing else??
Mike can attest to the fact that I also did a bunch of testing back in the mid/late 90's when the translators first hit the street and allowed us to run the chevy mafs.
I was running very low 12's with the stock MAF, and nothing else on my combo changed after that other than the translator and maf combo.
The first thing I noticed when switching over to the 3" LT1 maf was quicker spool upl, better throttle response, and I picked up over a 10th and a little over 1 mph in the quarter (this while keeping my WOT boost at the track set the same) (I always ran 28# while at the track). That was cool I thought.
So after a season of that I decided to switch to a 3.5" LS1 maf. Again, I noticed better throttle response, a little more street boost and even quicker spool up. While at the track I picked up a solid 2 tenths and 2 mph, still running my default race setting boost. By this time I was solidly in the 11.80's and pushing over 115mph. That from 12.10's/20's.
I never had to fool with the tune very much through all of this because of the extender chip. The maf readings never topped out so fueling was able to stay pretty consistent.
I guess my point is, saying you can run xx.xx on a stock maf is really pretty meaningless without everybody knowing what combo is behind it. And those same folks really need to step up to a bigger maf to realize the full potential available with the extra flow.
And in defference to my buddy NCTURBOS, even a slow (12second) car like mine or anyone's can benefit and see a definate gain by stepping up from the stock to a larger maf.
