Hi Folks:
A friend and myself have bought and installed the VR-B2. I have a 04 coupe and he has a late 03 Z06. Mine works great after I RE-DID the gaskets at the filter, fairly sh$tty work on their part . The Z06 is acting up at cruising speeds of 45-50 mph, 5th and 6th gear, surging. He contacted the vendor LAPD they directed him to Vararam. They sent him a different upper half of the filter compartment that has a divider plate just up stream of the MAF sensor. This did not help and the surging was even more noticeable. He has disconnected the negative battery cable, each time there have been changes made the VR-B2, overnight thinking that the ECM would relearn, but that has not helped. He called Vararam back and they said that they were working on a bleed-off valve that is piped up to the smog pump suction hose and he would have to adjust the bleed rate by trial and error. They also told him that they are having problems with C6 Vararam Cold Air intakes. Does anyone with a 03 or 04 Z06 that has a VR-B2 have the sam problem? SURGING?
Thanks
In Advance
TRB

 

I have an 02 with the vararam and it works like a champ! Are you very sure that you don't have any air leaks after the MAF.

Another thing to check is to make sure that the MAF wires and resistors (inside the MAF) are clean. If they are dirty/oily, you can spray electrical contact cleaner on them and blast the oil and dirt off. DON'T TOUCH THEM or try to wipe them off!

Let us know how you make out.

BC

 

I think you've either got an air leak downstream of the MAF or the MAF itself is contaminated/damaged. OTOH, the Z06 MAF doesn't have the incoming screen to stabilize the airflow, so I guess the VR could be getting the air turbulent enough to mess with the MAF.

Change back to the stock intake and see if the problem goes away.

HTH, and have a good one,
Mike

 

Yes, I do have a VaraRam VR-2B on my 2004 Z06, and YES it does surge. I did contact VaraRam and Patrick also told me he was manufacturing, and would send me, the new upper piece that he has sent to you. However, he has not yet sent me anything, and I now know that it doesn't cure the problem.
However, I have now had my VaraRam installed for about 4500 street driven miles, and I can add some observations to what you have posted, and to the VaraRam lore.
1) The computer does in fact seem to learn how to deal with the air flow, and I now (after 4500 miles) have very little surging.
2) The surging seems to be initiated or exacerbated by "bad air", or turbulance. That is, at low rpm, when following A) a semi trailer, or B) a large panel truck or other vehicle which creates a partial "vacuum" behind it (relative to the otherwise high pressure from the air ducts), the MAF or computer doesn't seem to know how to deal with the alternating air pressure or turbulance.
3) Verify that the "Airbridge" has not been cracked (on the underside) during installation, and that there are NO leaks around or after the MAF.
4) I have NOT had my car "tuned". However, various (LS-1 Edit, etc) tuners I have spoken to regarding this problem all state that they have "tuned lots of VaraRAm equipped Corvettes with this problem, and the problem is easily resolvable by revising the fuel mapping tables".
Problem is that I live in central Washington state, and there are no "tuners" in or near my area to spend about $500 to find out if they can or can't fix the problem.
Finally, as mentioned, the good news is that the problem lessens or disappears from most daily driving with time. I would like to ask you to please post feedback here on the forum if you should decide to pursue the option of having a tuner try to resolve this surging problem.
Best of luck and thanks,

 

Thanks for responding to my post.
WE are thinking about designing a damper to close off the outside ducts in heavy rain while opening a port on the inside, similar to the stock filter housing. We think this may help. The Vararam tech person thinks the f/a ratio is running too lean at partial throttle.. Do you have VR_-B2 water problems in Washington ?

 

The assumption the motor is running lean would be a good one; one of the ways cold air intakes "make" as much HP over stock like they do is leveraging against the fact GM runs the motors rich from the factory.

The fact is, a motor running 15% rich may loose 10HP, a motor running 15% lean will loose a lot more, with drivability issues like you are experiencing.

I'd either remove the Vararam or have the car tuned; personally I'd tune the car, but I realize it drops the HP per dollar value of this intake significantly.

 

TommyTRB I do not have rain (inlet) related problems here in central Washington. However, I did drive through "torrential" downpours in the central US driving home, including Louisville, Ky, where a semi hydroplaned off through an ARMCo barrier in downtown traffic, and rain so hard on I10 near San Bernadino that traffic came to a complete halt (in all lanes) with absolutely NO rain issues relative to the VaraRam CAI. Obviously if you drive with the intakes in or under water your engine will ingest water, hydrolock, and be ruined. So my advice would be "don't drive into standing water of any unknown depth".

 

I drove through VA last fall while it was raining so hard I was only able to drive 40 mph on the highway and the only issue that I had was some moisture (water droplets) did enter the inlet and caused a MAF code which cleared after it stopped raining! I got the high and low air flow codes at the same time indicating that moisture was hitting the sensing wires.

Other than that, NO problems!

BC