2 weeks ago bought a 2006 S Cabrio automatic with 5,100 miles. Car runs great but has a high pitched whistle at approximately 2,000 rpm. Sounds almost like a brake squeal. Can be caused to whistle while in park and cycling the engine rpm from 1,800 to 2,200 rpm. Dealer says the cause is a modification of adding a cool air intake box. Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Cool Blue

 

The dealer is EXACTLY right- the whistle is a very common side effect of an aftermarket cold air intake.
For some (myself included) it really doesn't bother me at all. For others, it drives them up a wall......
Which intake do you have? I know the Alta is famous for the whistle, other intakes may not be so bad......


Jason

 

I have the DDM intake with the 16% sc pulley and i get the whistle too, you can hear all that cold air getting sucked in!!

 

Yeah, I've got the Alta CAI and an Alta 15% pulley, and it's quite easy to hear the whine of the s'charger and the intaking sucking in air. I personally *love* the sound, but combined with my Magnaflow exhaust, it means that my stereo has to be pretty loud to hear over engine noise.

 

I don't see how the intake whistle is such a problem for so many people. At least on my car it only happens in a very small RPM range at specific loads. Very easy to avoid and I only hear it when I try to get into those specific conditions. Try pushing the peddle a little harder to avoid it, though it's not that bad.

 

there should be a "posted manual" that comes with the car saying:

**Super charger whistle/whine included**

I was sitting in my bedroom last night with the window open, my bedroom window faces an exppressway that is about 200 feet away and in between a man made pond/lake, I heard a car drive by that had a destinctive whistle/whine at which point put a smile on my face when I knew immediately that it was a Mini wihout having seen the car.

 

That whistle is actually the throttle boddy letting air in. Stock intakes are designed for driver comfort, they cover up that famous supercharger whine, the throttle body whistle, the sound of air being pulled,so that you dont hear it while taking your kids to school.

When you change your intake you then hear all the wonderful noises that are trapped behind the lousy stock box. Thats why when you change it out you as well gain better gas mileage as its sacrificed for comfort. Take that OEM!

Knowledge is power!

 

Dont worry, You will grow to love that sound.

 

... I haven't grown to love it. Love the whine. The whistle drives me nuts. Oh well. If it bothers me enough, I'll switch to a JCW intake - where the flap will be closed until you open the throttle so much that it isn't whistling... just whining...

 

blimey,

What intake do you have?

 

Dinan, with an Alta hose - and my theory is that the hose contributes perhaps as much to the whistle as the intake (stock hose muffles it more)... but I haven't bothered to switch back to the stock hose to test this theory. So I guess it doesn't bother me THAT much... yet...

 

i have noticed that people that use the silicone alta hose tend to have more noise(including the whistle) i have had the k&N for 2 years now with no unwanted noise's. so i think it is safe to say that is largely because of the hose.

 

I had K&N intake with the stock hose and now I have switched to DDM CAI along with Alta's hose and there is more of a "air sucking" sound that is pronounced when you go full throttle or pound the peddle than before. The whine was always there even before any mods. It's just that the "whine" after the K&N Filter along with the stock hose was a little more pronounced.

p.s. not sure about the whistle though.

 

all in all if you wanna keep the cold air intake, your gonna have to deal with the added noise

 

It's a lot louder on the automatic. I've tried a few things to reduce the sound, including swapping from a DDM CAI to the JCW, but so far the only thing that has helped is time. The amplitude of the whistle diminishes as the filter starts to get a bit dirty, but it doesn't go away completely.

I've even considered getting one of those snake-oil vortex generators off of Ebay in hopes that it would introduce enough turbulence above the throttle body to kill the whistle. Of course, it would probably either kill performance, or would disintegrate after a week and kill my engine

 

Interesting...

Yeah, I love ALL the "noise" - except the whistle... oh well..

 

perhaps try a different CAI

 

Other than the JCW (which would block most sound until you hit 3500RPM, which is above the threshold of "whistle"), I don't see how a different CAI will make any difference to the whistle, which is literally air "whistling" past the edge of the throttle when it's at a specific angle... I can control the whistle very precisely with my toe on the throttle - make it start and stop at will... but I DO need to do the stock hose test sometime... but I don't want to lose my LOUD and blingy Alta hose...

 

My K&N typhoon is very quite

 

Yeah the JCW works great, no low rev whistle and all the benefits of letting more air in when you want it

Had a Dinan CAI on an E46 and it wheezed plenty, after a time I felt kinda silly driving around since people could clearly hear it and it sounded goofy and 'look at me I have Darth Vader under the hood' - don't miss it and am happy there is an alternative.

The funniest mod boy noise we've had though was on a WRX that came with a blow off valve installed- man that sounded tooo hysterical and actually was embarrassing, had to take that off asap.

 

The thing with the whistle is, specific cars do it, while others don't (or do it less) - it's a throttle thing... and it's not universal. If a car "has" it... then most intakes will exhibit some amount of it... if a car doesn't have it, then that's good...

 

blimey,

do u think that the cars that exibit this excessive whistle need to have the intake path cleaned, TB, MAF ect?

 

I don't think so. Mine started it when it was WAY clean... others have said that it's actually the result of the chamfer on the edge of the throttle plate - which seems to vary a tiny bit...

 

Perhaps Molder and Scully should be contacted for this mystery

 

I've even considered taking my throttle apart, and grinding a different profile on the rim...