Hello, some guys tested Mina gallery intake vs. stock intake.
Long story short - do not use Mina one because it is not good for engine performance.

 

Saw this posted earlier on Facebook. Just ordered mine on Amazon last week and it doesn’t look to be in transit so I’m trying to have it cancelled.

 

Wow... anyone successfully reduce the heat via ceramic coating on their Mina intake? My O.E.M. intake has a big crack in it. Hopefully someone will come out with a carbon fiber option that isn’t outrageously priced.

 

I think it is not the heat soak. It is the design itself.
Also do not run your car with additional air sucked after mafs (unmetered air). Your car is running lean.

 

I love my Mina Intake, it cools a lot quicker than the plastic intake hoses. I place ice above the intake and manifold charge coolers after a few runs. Provides very cool IATs. But when in traffic, it gets very hot to the touch.

 

I sent a cancellation request to Mina and I received a response:

Hello and thanks for the message.

This item has already been dispatched and estimated to you in the coming 2-3 days. The intake tube in question has been developed over 7 years ago and been exhaustively tested to result in a sample and positive net gain in throttle response and performance. It has also been tested by dozens of customer, two of which are running 11 seconds XFRs (although in those instances it was likely wrapped in a header thermal wrap). As with all Mina products there is a 100% satisfaction commitment. We encourage you to install the item and if you are not satisfied with fitment and or performance we will accept a return no questions asked.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us at 818-342-0273
Thanks,

Robert



thoughts? My stock intake tube is pretty much damaged. Should I just get a new stock intake tube? Or go Mina?

 

I’ve decided to give this intake a chance.
maybe my results will be different. Ill keep everyone posted.

 

I have changed yesterday from mina wrapped with heat reflective tape to stock tube and damn it definitely pulls harder. I really felt that because with mina I drove for past two years.
Drop that s*it and use oem, Jaguar R&D department have done their job...

 

I put a set-up similar to the Mina on my old XFR - Twin City Performance (TCP) - and it made no difference I could detect.
They went out of business some time ago.
As far as I can figure out the thing with the AJ133SC is that the stock induction system already flows as much air as the engine can handle, and as the air is being sucked/pulled in by the SC anyway trying to ram more in via bigger diameter intake tubes is not going to increase the volume of air going through the SC at all.
To make matters worse it seems there is a fair amount of evidence that the metal tubing on these after-market systems results in hotter intake air than the stock plastic system = loss of power.
Then again there is an argument that this is the case only when the car is not moving and at any speed over a crawl the cool air flowing through and around the metal intake tubes keeps them relatively cool and no hotter than the stock plastic tubes.
For a few months now I have been tossing up whether to spend a few pennies on the Mina intake system (upper and/or lower) for my F-Type but I am as yet undecided.
One one hand those who have installed both parts or just the lower section report a significant increase in SC whine, but no-one has yet come back with any definitive power/torque results.

 

I'm always interested when I see comparisons like this, but this comparison was not done equally comparing one product to another. If you look at the video and see when they dyno'd with MINA intake, I believe they had the engine cover on (I do not know for sure, I'm only guessing), and more importantly the hood was closed, which I thought was very odd. I have dyno'd many a vehicles, I've probably had 100's of dyno runs at multiple dyno shops, with different vehicles of all makes, and one thing they all had in common, is the fan(s) that they use will never simulate the same type of airflow of you actually rolling down the highway, so what do most dyno operators do, they will remove any engine covers (if possible), and they will always, I mean always, open the hood. Kind of how they did the second run with the stock intake, you can see the engine cover and the MINA intake on the floor, and the hood is clearly open.

What makes the video more odd, is they spent so much time showing how much heat soak occurs, by you sitting idle, guess what you're doing on a dyno, you're sitting idle with your hood closed, all you're doing is heat soaking...

I think the comparison is very flawed, but hey what do I know...

 

I have my Mina intake wrapped with Thermo-tec 13575. It makes it so that you can actually touch and handle the pipe even after heat-soaking in traffic.

 

I guess one question I have is in the comments, he said after the dyno run he disconnected the battery for 5 minutes because lights popped up on the dash. First run was with the Mina. Then after the stock did better. Was the battery disconnected between the runs? I reason I ask is because My friend did a dyno on his Volvo and his car always dynoed better after he had the battery disconnected for 10 minutes. The ecm would reset and he would get better results until the ecm relearned. Are the jags similar?

also why did it display crank horsepower and not rear wheel horsepower?

 

Like h Jones pointed out.. why run the Mina with the hood closed and engine cover on while running the stock with the engine cover off and hood open?

 

I scrolled down to see this comment, and I think its being taken out of context, from reading the comments, I would have no way of knowing if he disconnected the battery in between runs, or after the runs were done... and disconnecting the battery is not needed. Either use a OBDII scan tool to reset the faults (assuming they weren't there before the car went on the dyno), or simply by cycling the ignition on/ off, you'll eventually clear after four cycles...

On the other hand, if he disconnected in between runs, then what you're saying would absolutely be true, as it would reset all the parameters, and an engine that has been heat soaking might be pulling timing amongst other things, so resetting it would do wonders for power gain, assuming you have taken the heat soak issues away... but like I said already, I cant see it in the video itself, and the way this is brought up in the comments has to do with someone having difficulty running their car on a dyno, and wouldn't lead me to believe that it was done in between runs, but rather after the runs were completed to clear the errors...

 

I had already ordered the Mina Exhaust System and Intake tube from Mina before this thread was posted and I expect delivery tomorrow from FedEx. I have spoken with Chris at Mina Gallery at length about this particular claim and I am not convinced at all that the claims made are credible and accurate. This was a very poorly produced video and a total waste of the time it took to view it. Quite unprofessional.
A few days ago I installed the polished stainless "Supercharged" hood louvres from Mina. Whole new sporty look now and I am quite pleased with the result. I have had several friends compliment the way it looks now. Anxious to get the exhaust and intake tube installed.

 

So here is my 2 cents as an owner of the 5.0L NA XF. I did not buy the Mina intake tube for any HP gain. I got them because it was the same price as I could find the OEM part. My plastic 10-year old Jag intake literally fell apart when I removed it to find a vacuum leak causing a P106 OBDII error. Plus the polished metal looked cooler than the stock unit.

It fit perfectly, installed easily and indeed looks great. My seat-of-the-pants meter cannot tell if it added any HP (the NA engine claims are less than the supercharged version), but it does seem to improve throttle response. There is a more noticeable noise from the intake now, but it is not intrusive.

All in all, I am pleased and I am pretty sure this metal intake tube will outlast me or the engine. No more plastic to get brittle and leak.

 

I'll chime in here since I've had my '11 XFR since new in 2011 (it currently has 52K miles) and, basically since day one, I've run a Mina pulley, ECUTG tune, an X-pipe, electric cutout exhausts in combination with Mina mufflers, no hood insulation or engine cover, and K&N panel filters with, in order of use from beginning, the OEM intake tubing, the Twin Cities intake tubing, and now, finally, the Mina intake tubing, which I immediately wrapped in heat shield (prior to initial install, purely as a cheap insurance policy, rather than any noticed temp issues). The reason for changing away from the OEM tubing to the Twin Cities tubing was primarily to try to extract more noise from the engine compartment, and any performance benefit would've just been gravy. However, I didn't notice much, if any, performance improvement after going from OEM to Twin Cities tubing (keeping in mind that I'd already been running K&N filters for years prior to changing the tubing), and I also didn't notice any sound improvement that I recall (probably due to having the loud exhaust, as much as anything). But, I wasn't really happy with the creasing of the Twin Cities silicone hoses, as well as a few other fit & finish issues, so when Mina came out with their tubes, and because I trusted Chris at Mina, I jumped on them. Granted, I'd wished that they'd been carbon fiber, but since I really wanted to get the flimsy-feeling and looking Twin Cities tubes off of my car, and there was no way that I was... gasp... ever going back to OEM, I pulled the trigger. I've never dyno'd it, and I also didn't notice much, if any, performance improvement from Twin Cities to Mina, but that's probably to be expected when my car was/is as modified as mine. I feel like I did notice slightly more noise, which might be all in my head, but what I can also say is that I haven't experienced any heat soak issues or anything else to make me think they're somehow inhibiting performance. As I mentioned, I did wrap them before I ever installed them, but even if I hadn't, I haven't seen anything to suggest that they might've ever contributed to higher intake temps or dimished performance, and I'm still 100% happy with them.

 

I suppose I should chime in here too:

• I share the same reservations about the video that other people do. These engines produce a lot of heat - they are designed to run hot because efficiency - and running with the hood closed vs open is (in my opinion) going to have a significant effect on heat soak. Feels like a slightly disingenuous attempt to maximize any heat soaking effect of the Mina intake.
• Nevertheless, the amount of heat from these engines IS a reason to consider heatsoak and minimization of it. There are a lot of companies that will ceramic-coat pipe like this which I expect would have an excellent effect, as would heatwrapping etc. I've wanted to have a carbon copy of the mina intake made for some time, but wanted the option to run shielded cone filters and not sure if that would require a different pipe.
• Entirely anecdotally, I felt a considerable increase in mid-range torque and pickup at low-medium speed running my own DIY version of the Mina intake. Also, having to go back to stock to pass smog inspection (thanks, California) I felt an equally considerable decrease in pickup/performance with the stock pipe/airboxes. I also used my Autel to reset the adaptive values in the ECU between these changes, which I note with interest that the people in the video didn't do.
• It's obvious that Jaguar designed this intake prioritising NVH (e.g. those resonator tubes to reduce supercharger whine/induction noise) over power, so to suggest that somehow it's guaranteed you'll lose power by changing the OEM intake out for anything else is incorrect. Jaguar had much more than just performance to consider when designing the OEM intake pipe.
• If you want any other evidence take a look at the Jaguar XFR Land Speed Record car, which had a huge intake pipe from the grille straight into the supercharger:
  
• Or maybe Jaguar's own intake pipe on at least one of the Project 8s?
  

Heatsoak is a serious consideration with aftermarket intakes, and you need to work on managing it.

But equally, that video is in no way "case closed" and nobody should take it as such.

 

Well, with mine own version of aluminium intake (looks similar like Mina) and dual pulley setup ive dynoed 682hp/850nm.
Im always monitoring IAT2, so i see that in a heavy traffic it rises more than with a stock plastic one, but once the car starts moving it cools down way faster and to lower values than with a stock one. So definentely a must-have.

 

[Vytautas
Thanks for finding that video! I was suspecting power loss with such aftermarket intakes and tubes all along. We had to remove quite a bit of these setups on xk anf xf cars while logging the perimeters for the ECU tune to make the car run properly . As a matter of fact a record setting 5.0 2010 XF Supercharged we just tuned ( also had an aftermarket intake setup) which we had to remove after extensive logging is now running with full stock intake setup back in place.
He only run one time because of the fire jacket requirement. Tried to let go of the gas at the end of the quarter mile but still went faster and got kicked off the track but managed to set a record for the fastest XF XFR XFRS XKR XkRS cars while letting off the gas Projected power for this XF is 700 plus.