| If you do not know what a MAP or MAF sensor is, I would suggest reading up on them first. This post is more of an informative and easy to understand comparison of the two once you know what they are. I know this has been debated before, but I had a very interesting talk with Clark Stepplar of JWT I thought I could share. Those who haven't had the opportunity to speak with Clark, if you can get him on the phone, he is an incredibly smart individual who is more than happy to share his personal views on almost any subject. We also talked about thrust vs. ball bearing turbos but most of that conversation was non-informative. First off, everyone seems to use the same, "the MAF is a bottleneck" response for why a MAP sensor is better. I am going to leave this point out of the conversation. Clark used the analogy of people going to the theater. MAF Sensor:
When going to the theater, picture yourself as making people pay at the door and as they enter, you count the number of people who come in. You then have a very accurate measure of people who come into the theater (i.e. incoming air measurement). MAP Sensor:
Now when going to the theater, picture yourself making people pay at the door but NOT counting the people as they come in. Instead, you have the entire seating area resting on a giant scale. You also figure the average weight of the person attending the program and divide the total weight by the average weight for a count of the people attending the program that night (i.e. measuring air in the system by estimated "weight" in the room). Hands down MAF wins. The only way a map sensor could be AS accurate at this point is if you did not estimate, but knew EXACTLY what the average "weight" (read: pressure) was in the room. Now comes the trade-off. What if during the program, some people got pissed off and left the show out the side (air escaping via a blow-off valve). The MAF way of doing things would still think it had x number of members and would keep on going as if nothing occured (rich condition). The MAP way would recognize that drop in "weight" and would know that some people got up and left. What this really shows is that either system is good, but neither system is perfect. If anyone actually reads all of this post, I would be happy to give some follow-up to any question.
|
