variable intake manifold?

I know about variable valve timing but what is variable intake manifold? Whats variable about a intake manifold? Looking at a Lexus for my wife. This is a new term for me. I googled it with no luck. The lexus has the same 3.5 v6 as my Tacoma I think.

 

Who cares, it's a Lexus!

 

Some light reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Control_Induction_System

How OV tune is dealing with the system. Scroll to the bottom of the first post, or search for "Next we sought out to tune the Acoustic Valve control."

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/2016-toyota-tacoma-v6-ecu-tuning-alpha-release.495735/

 

Tacoma engine ..right?

 

They share the same displacement and a few components...that’s it.

 

A variable intake changes the effective length of the runners dynamically. The longer the runner, the more torque. The shorter, the more HP. Porsche has been doing this for many years.

 

Short version is that short intake runners are really good at delivering power low-down in the powerband while longer intake runners are really good at delivering power higher in the powerband. You get the benefit of short runners at lower RPM and then a flap redirects air through longer runners for the higher RPMs to let the engine breathe better.

 

That's a new one on me, I'm falling behind.

 

I bought a lexus intake for Tacoma because I wanted the Intake horn/resonator. From what I can tell by looking at the parts of both the Tacoma and the GS 3.5 v6, There are some clear differences with the intake manifold and the entire intake assembly.