Hi guys,

I have read that from MY2007 to MY2010 our intake manifold has swirl flaps made of plastic.In my opinion they are pointless and dangerous,if they brake or get stuck you are f k. So I want to change my intake with an MY2010- MY2013 one For 150 pounds you get a little more performance from your engine because there is nothing to interfere with the air going to the cylinders maybe 1 or 2 hp just like a sticker and you know that your pistons will never have melted plastic on them.
Will I need a ecu reflash for the new intake to tell the ecu the swirl flap actuator is bye bye?

What to you think about this mod?

When i had my bmw's this was a regular mod, rather replace the manifold we would remove the flaps and the actuator rod and then blank off the holes in the manifold were the flaps had been..

98% percent had no issues those that did often found there egr valve was clogged up the cleaned or replaced or bypassed them and all was well HSE TD4 Stornoway Grey ★ Rear Spoiler ★ Black Leather Interior ★ Panoramic Roof ★ Navigation with Bluetooth ★ 19 " Alloys ★ Alpine Stereo 10 Disc Auto changer and Ipod connection and lots of other nice toys ★

Does anybody know if the vacuum servo opens the flaps or closes them?
I was wondering if we could remove and plug the vacuum pipe and just leave all flaps installed and inactivly in the open mode.
If on the other hand blanking the vacuum pipe left the flaps shut we would have reduced power from then onwards.
Any ideas anybody?
If we can blank off the pipe with flaps open it would be a low cost solution.
Kind regards from Fred 2010GS Auto ex Celeb, Santorini Black, 2011 facelift , spoiler, spats, mudflaps, LED footwell lamps, Witter detach,
Other cars:-
1958 & 1959 Austin J40 Pedal Cars under restoration (I make many J40 parts)
If you have an Austin J40 or Pathfinder Pedal Car looking for a new home pls PM me.
2009 Meriva

Surely leaving the flaps in place, either open or closed, means that the problems of screws dropping out/plastic breaking and either of them finding their way into the combustion chamber is still present?
Would blanking plugs be cheaper than a new manifold?
Anyone have a source for blanking plugs?

Hi bossbob

The swirl flaps will either be controlled by vacuum or an electrical actuator and rod set up I have t looked on the Landy tbh. They were are / were one of the motor industries poor attempts at cutting emissions they are pretty much fully open on throttle 98% of the time and when the car comes to a stop say at tragic lights they close to cut down emissions. Other than that there useless and many including BMW have binned the idea due to them failing.

I have only heared of one case for a freelander. When I had my 5 series the BMW forum I was on did a group buy from http://www.pmwltd.co.uk/. I think if there is enough interest and you know the size of the blanking plug they will make some up for you if they don't stock them already. HSE TD4 Stornoway Grey ★ Rear Spoiler ★ Black Leather Interior ★ Panoramic Roof ★ Navigation with Bluetooth ★ 19 " Alloys ★ Alpine Stereo 10 Disc Auto changer and Ipod connection and lots of other nice toys ★

The flaps are controlled by a vacuum actuator.
All we need to know is if by disconnecting the vacuum pipe does that naturally leave the flaps open??
.
If it leaves them shut the we need to detach the actuator and manually turn the rod then suitably lock it in this position.
Should be a five minute job for peace of mind.
.
Does anybody have a manifold off an engine that they can confirm what the lever position should be?
.
Kind regards from Fred 2010GS Auto ex Celeb, Santorini Black, 2011 facelift , spoiler, spats, mudflaps, LED footwell lamps, Witter detach,
Other cars:-
1958 & 1959 Austin J40 Pedal Cars under restoration (I make many J40 parts)
If you have an Austin J40 or Pathfinder Pedal Car looking for a new home pls PM me.
2009 Meriva

No by disconnecting the vac pipe they will stay closed. It's the differential in vac pressure that opens them. Plus they would still be fitted in place and the problem is the fixing screws let go and it's bye bye swirl flap I will log into the BMW forum and find some pics so you can see the state they can get in. HSE TD4 Stornoway Grey ★ Rear Spoiler ★ Black Leather Interior ★ Panoramic Roof ★ Navigation with Bluetooth ★ 19 " Alloys ★ Alpine Stereo 10 Disc Auto changer and Ipod connection and lots of other nice toys ★

Hello, has anybody removed the swirl flaps from the inlet manifold?

I have removed the flaps on a donor manifold, but I have not bolted it on yet. It will take me a few days before I have time to replace it. The brass rod was a bit hard to pull out. I had to use a blowtorch on all the four flaps to be able to pull the rod out. And the flaps themselves was really hard to break apart. This car had only 55000km on the clock. I guess that is why they was still solid. It is the heat from the exhaust (EGR) that ruin the flaps. The combination of hot exhaust and plastic is not a good one over time. If you blind of the EGR system the flaps will never broke - dependent of the milage on your car of cause.
I can post some photos later.

Last weekend I finally decided to replace the inlet manifold with the one that I previously had removed the swirl flaps in.
I got surprised when I discovered that one half of the swirl flap in cyl. 1 was missing! My car has only 94000km on the clock so this was a big surprise. It runs just fine, but for about two weeks ago when the car was idling at 750rpm it suddenly started to run on only three cylinders! I turned off the ignition and could not understand why this was happening. When I tried to crank it again there was no compression on one of the cylinders, the car started - compression came back, but it could not rev over 3000rpm in neutral. (Limp home mode?) I turned the ignition off - started again and everything was back to normal! (No DTC or engine lights)
I guess the half swirl flaps had stuck in the valve opening and held it open and as a consequense no compression until it was sucked completely into the combustion chamber and melted.
My FL2 is tuned, has no cat, no EGR and is running with 2SO in the diesel tank. It runs like hell and no harm seems to have happen.
Look how clean the engine is inside the cylinder head. The throttle body was fairly clean too, but the soot stick very easily to swirl flaps plastic.









Last edited by FL2Printzern on 18th Jun 2014 7:54 pm. Edited 1 time in total

Hi Printzern; you seem to confirm my thoughts that it is EGR heat and muck that causes flap failure.
.
I have been running an EGR blank plate for over two months now.
.
I had in mind to remove the inlet manifold to clean it all then set the flaps to horizontal and mechanically lock the shaft from rotating.
.
Please could you give us your views on this suggestion, ie to leave the non functional flaps in place.
.
Kind regards from Fred.
. 2010GS Auto ex Celeb, Santorini Black, 2011 facelift , spoiler, spats, mudflaps, LED footwell lamps, Witter detach,
Other cars:-
1958 & 1959 Austin J40 Pedal Cars under restoration (I make many J40 parts)
If you have an Austin J40 or Pathfinder Pedal Car looking for a new home pls PM me.
2009 Meriva

After my last experience I would recommend removing them, but of course they will stay longer in place if they don't move. This is the second best solution. It is a big job to remove the manifold. I removed everything in front. because I was going to replace my 150A alternator with a 180A as well and there is not too much space to work in down there. (Backed up the A/C gas.) I replaced the silicon gasket too, but the old ones was just fine. You can clean and grease them up again with silicon grease if you don't have new gaskets. (But I think you want new ones too.) Just remember to put the big o-rings onto the manifold and not in the holes of the engine block. You also need a pump to suck the air out of the fuel system afterwards, but maybe you are a car mechanics so i don't need to tell you this.
I have not removed the three remaining flaps on the old manifold yet, but I will and report my findings here. Maybe there a two different qualities of the swirl flap manifolds? As I said in my first post, the flaps on the 55000km manifold was almost impossible to brake apart.



There are part numbers for both with and without swirl flaps on the manifold...

Removed the brass rod and remaining flaps on the manifold with 94000km on the clock. It's a lot more wear and tear on this one compared to the one with 55000km on the clock. The difference is so big that my advice must be: Get rid of this ! The plastic swirl flaps was much more crispy on this one too.

When swirl flaps let go in a BMW...

I think the only saving grace from LR, is that the flap is plastic, and is likely to be smashed up in the cylinder, as opposed to the steel ones used on BMW engines, which bounce around, causing lots of damage...

fredastaire wrote:

Hi Printzern; you seem to confirm my thoughts that it is EGR heat and muck that causes flap failure.
.
I have been running an EGR blank plate for over two months now.
.
I had in mind to remove the inlet manifold to clean it all then set the flaps to horizontal and mechanically lock the shaft from rotating.
.
Please could you give us your views on this suggestion, ie to leave the non functional flaps in place.
.
Kind regards from Fred.
.