The R600 Intake System is one of the best-known products in RacingLine’s portfolio of performance upgrades. With OEM standards in mind, Racingline designed this intake to flow up to 600bhp worth of air. Here’s the story of RacingLine’s R600.

It’s been known since day one that the more effectively you can direct mass amounts of cold air into the motor, the more power and reliability you will gain.

So, starting from the basics, your internal combustion engine is basically a pump. Air and fuel go in one end and then you get exhaust gases, heat, and a spinning crankshaft out from the other. As a rule of thumb, an engine needs about 14 times as much air as fuel. So add more fuelling (as most tunes do), or rev it higher and you can imagine how much the airflow will need to be compensated by.

Are factory intakes upgradeable?

The good news for any Volkswagen or Audi owner of a stock 2.0/1.8 TSI EA888 gen.3 or gen.3B car is that the factory intake flows decently. But as always with factory parts, there’s a compromise involved. When Volkswagen Group’s engineers design their air intakes, their priorities are different to us ‘car people’: they want something that is inexpensive, quiet, and mildly efficient when running a stock setup. Which is okay for most customers, on most cars, most of the time.

So do I need a Cold-Air Intake System?

R600 for MQB Trifoam Filter

R6000 for MQB Cotton Filter

This is the question we get asked more than anything else

If your car is stock then the answer is no, you don’t need an intake at stock power levels. Naturally, us car enthusiasts, being car enthusiasts, want that additional performance. A nice aftermarket intake will look great under the hood, sound good when you accelerate out of a corner, and you’ll be set up for any additional modifications you may make in the future.

Once you take that first step and reflash the ECU, the stock intake system starts to become more and more of a restriction to the engine’s breathing. Stage 1 cars are reaching that tipping point in which you need to either install an intake system to make the most of your tune. Normally you’ll see a 16-20 hp difference on a Stage 1 car.

Then once you reach Stage 2 you have no choice, you need an upgraded intake. Set yourself up for success and grab yourself an R600 – which is still the preferred intake for the vast majority of the Stage 3 500+bhp cars out there – you’ll be sure to have the foundation for any future modifications, no matter how far you go.

Why Choose R600 Intake System?

1. Size Matters

Size matters. That’s the truth. And RacingLine made size their priority for every aspect of their development.

It all started with some advanced 3D scanning of the engine bay. The scans determined the exact packaging space they had to squeeze in the largest intake possible. The result - it’s the largest airbox volume on the market for the MQB platform.

At the same time, their CFD work quickly showed that breathing in through larger, twin frontal air inlets across the width of the car’s grille area would result in a higher airflow rate, and lower intake air temperatures. The factory’s choice of single-sided intake aperture is too restrictive for the performance goals you might have in mind.

So that’s the R600’s airbox – what about the size of the filter itself?

The R600 houses a (more than) double-sized Trifoam® dome filter, or a Pleated Cotton depending on your preference. It is a giant, double-capacity filter that enables minimum pressure differences, yet provides maximum filtration protection to your engine. Take a look at these numbers:

Standard filter area = 43,200mm²

R600 filter area = 96,477 mm²

We are confident that Racingline has the largest filter surface area of any intake on the market for the MQB TSI.

2. Keeping Cool

It’s very important to draw in air from outside the car efficiently. Whatever the ambient temperature on the day, this air is “cold” compared to the hot air inside the engine bay. The colder the air, the better.

So by extending the R600’s intake apertures across the front of the car, maximizes the amount of cold air directed into the giant, double-sized airbox. Meanwhile, the choice of PU material for the airbox is very deliberate – it has the best possible thermal insulation properties to keep the engine's bay heat out.

Since your cylinders can only hold so much air volume, the lower air densities of hot air lead to less oxygen in the combustion chamber. Reduced oxygen means reduced fuel use, and less fuel use means lower power. Don't get caught with an unshielded open intake and expect to gain power.

3. Believe your Ears

We started this blog by talking about the compromises on the factory intake system. One of the main requirements for standard Volkswagen Group cars is to keep the intake noise quiet at all times. It’s a simple fact that increased airflow means increased noise. Customers who install the R600 typically notice not only faster throttle response but also louder, richer induction sounds at wide-open throttle.

As the R600 is an enclosed intake system, the volume levels are well-contained in steady driving on the open road. But open it up, rev it hard and the sound quality is music to the ears of any car enthusiast!

And finally...

“Why do I need an intake rated for 600hp”, some may ask. Well, it’s for the same reason that you drive a car that can hit 155 mph in a country that has a 60 mph limit. It’s all about operating efficiently at any level, and the reassurance of knowing you’ve got plenty on tap whenever you need it.

With big-turbo conversions getting close to the 600 hp power output already, you can be reassured that by choosing RacingLine’s R600 you’ll have all the headroom you’ll ever need for future upgrades to your car.