SE rubber throttle body lead arm

[blackster]

The stock SE leading throttle body arm is rubber and the SPM leading arm is metal, is SPM incinuating because the stock arm is rubber, it would be collapsing on itself under acceleration/boost affecting power? If you were to change the arm to metal, would you need to change the cooler, if you werent adding additional boost.

[Alf]

The rubber one tends to blow up like a balloon. Noticeable even under normal SE boost. If you increase the boost, it's likely to get worse, and I expect it would eventually fail from fatigue, though I haven't heard of this failure mode occurring as yet.

Can't see why a change to metal would require an change in (i assume inter-) cooler.

Cheers,
Alf

[Okibi]

Flyin' Miata did a lot of research with mods for the SE.

http://www.flyinmiata.com/index.php?dept=68

Many Mazdaspeed cars suffer from a leaky bypass valve, restricting boost. We've seen cars here that couldn't make much boost at all even with the wastegate bypassed.

Another problem is the soft throttle body inlet pipe. At higher boost levels, this can actually swell like a balloon. It's pretty entertaining to watch. It can also blow off on stock cars which is not a happy experience. We decided to solve both problems at the same time.