The damn hood scoop. I know it looks cool but wouldn't a reverse scoop be much for functional and help our sorry little intercoolers do their job better? Even looking at the air flow posted in the image gallery by Node (thanks, good pic) shows the scoop isn't getting much air.

Why wouldn't the engineers reverse it?

 

The stock scoop was designed for the stock turbo where lag and pressure drop are more important than efficiency. If you are running more boost, then a more efficient FMIC would be better, but I think that the stock IC is fine for a somewhat stock engine.

I'm not sure if reversing the scoop would help much. Yes, you would get higher pressure air into the IC, but you would also get less velocity. This would be good for an air intake which is able to suck in whatever air it needs, but I don't think this would do much for a static IC which would do better with some air velocity through its vanes.

 

interesting. I mistakenly assumed higher pressure air would me more velocity going over the vanes of the IC. I am far from a physicist though and I really hoped the mazda engineers knew what they were doing when building the stock car :-)

of course a FMIC would be the best bet with good ducting from turbo and to intake, I was just wondering about the stock application.