What is VICS?
VICS is “Variable Inertia Charging System” and is also refered to as “Variable Intake Control System”. In conventional intake manifolds, they are designed to have an air flow compromise between low end and top end power. Because of this compromise, power delivery from the engine is not optimum nor ideal. What some manufacturers (such as Nissan and Mazda for example) have done is designed the intake manifold to have an isolated runner system (there are many types of intake manifolds) to offer the best flow characteristics. They didn’t stop there. To squeeze as much power out of the engine, yet allowing the vehicle to be streetable and mass producable, they added a secondary set of intake runners into the manifold. With this dual runner system, there is the long runner system for low to mid level RPM operation, and the short runner system for high RPMs. On Mazda’s dual runner intake systems (hereafter refered to as “VICS”), they designed the long runners to be narrow and oval in shape to
