At least once a week on the Facebook Skyline owner groups we see the same question asked about the Chinese made Ebay Greddy intakes for the RB25 and if they are any good. To answer this question we are going to compare one to a Plazmaman intake plenum.
When shopping for a new RB25 intake plenum the two most commonly asked about is Greddy and Plazmaman. Greddy uses a shortened runner design and Plazmaman utilises the longer factory runners. Based on back to back dyno testing the Greddy intake creates slightly more top end peak power while sacrificing mid range torque.
By using the longer factory runners of the Plazmaman intake this helps bring boost on at an earlier rpm with gains up to 500rpm better spool! In summary if you want your car to perform better, spool faster, make more useable mid range power and torque while not making quite so much top end bhp as the Greddy then Plazmaman is the one to go for. If you only want a number from the dyno or want an intake just to tidy the engine bay and dont mind the loss of midrange performance go with Greddy.
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| Plazmaman RB25 Intake Plenum | Greddy RB25 Intake Manifold |
One thing a lot of RB25 owners don't like is the standard Nissan factory side entry plenum design and the crossover pipe. My number one reason to change the plenum would be for performance gains, but we often speak to customers that arent so concerned about performance and just want to change the intake because they say it looks ugly and it makes changing spark plugs more difficult than it needs to be, so the solution is to get rid of it completely by fitting a front facing intake plenum.
Although there is several options on the market we are going to focus on the two most common intakes, Plazmaman and the Greddy "style" otherwise known as a Freddy.
Plazmaman is a high quality product that has been engineered in Australia and the cost starts at £759.
Freddy is made in China and usually found on Ebay or Ali Express for around £200.
Freddy intakes appeal to people because they are cheap. On the plus side they tidy up the engine bay, reduce the overall length of intake pipework and gain peak bhp on the dyno. On the downside they are often made to a very poor quality and usually need additional work at extra cost before being usable. Some of the things that are required is machining the mounting flange and cleaning up the ports. The factory throttle cable needs replacing with a longer cable and the throttle body needs changing, all at extra expense. When it comes to performance, Greddy style intakes do make slightly more peak bhp gains than Plazmaman, but due to replacing the longer factory runners with a shorter design this causes a loss of midrange torque. On average we commonly see a huge drop of around 60ft/lbs!!
With Plazmaman a lot of people are put off by the price as its almost 4x the price of a Freddy intake. For the extra cost you are getting a product that has been built to an extremely high quality with proper research, engineering and testing behind it. Plazmaman have developed the product over many years to deliver performance gains in both BHP and midrange torque. There is no need for additional machine work or port matching. They are designed to work with factory throttle body, factory fuel rail and factory throttle cable. In other words there is no extra hidden costs involved.
When deciding what intake to go for you just need to ask yourself what you want from your overall setup. Do you want a product that is built to a high quality, comes ready to bolt on with no extra effort or expense, does not require changing additional parts and delivers proven performance gains in both BHP and torque even though it comes at a higher price, or do you just want something cheap that will "do a job" to clean up a bay a bit even at the sacrifice of overall performance. Personally I would pick quality and performance every time.
