Greddy intercooler piping

Hey all, im new at the DSM tuning stuff but i bought a car with a couple mods. I was was wondering what exactly are the advantages to the greddy intercooler piping. My car has it but it has a stock intercooler and stock turbo. Also my greddy blow off vavle is set to the loudest setting...will this effect performance and how do you know what setting to put it on. It sounds cool but i don't want to harm the engine.

Hard upper piping is always a good thing, especially on 2g cars. The stock UICP has a nasty kink in it behind the airbox. The only advantage of the greddy pipe over other hard pipes, is that it is flanged for the greddy BOV. And I'll bet that the previous owner had picked out that valve based on what he heard/read and chose that piping simply to facilitate its installation. I usually recomend pipes much cheaper than the greddy ones, but in your case they came with the car, so no matter either way. On the stock turbo and IC, you can run about 16 psi. The pipe upgrade will improve airflow even at that level. You have the right attitude about the BOV, which is refreshing :D ITs not about the sound, but about venting the upper pipe properly. As long as its not giving that compressor surge type sound from too tight a setting, and its not leaking at full boost from being to soft, you can set it anywhere in between. To see if it is leaking go to www.vfaq.com and build the boost leak tester. EVERYONE that owns a dsm should be doing this test at least monthly, or after upgrades, or any time the car feels a bit slow. It can cost you a LOT of HP to have intake leaks on a turbo car. But thats getting a bit OT...