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Just putting it straight in terms of logic:
Any intake system is designed to both provide and limit the amount of air to enter the mixture to match the designated AFR by the cpu and sensors. The AFR is set to what 11:1? or was it 12.1:1 (forgot; it could be different to each region too!) for the n52 128i and anything relatively above or below the set number will lead to flagging and engine check lights for an n/a fuel injected engine such as ours.
This will go for scoops, air systems, short ram intakes, cold air intakes, and the likes for the n52 128i. Any of these may change the AFR. By doing so, two things can happen. 1) It could benefit the system by providing the extra air needed to match up to the AFR (aka not push extra air in, but push the air lacking in). 2) It could not benefit the system by pushing in excess air relative to the AFR and cause engine check lights to light up and just make things annoying. Anything that changes the airflow and/or AFR, in order to be fully utilized--and flags avoided--, requires a reflash of the ECU. This includes parts for the air intake and even the exhaust.
Pushing in extra air won't be beneficial and you won't see any "gains" from it unless you reflash your ecu and account for the extra increase in airflow. However, the scoops and/or other 3rd party parts could help in such a circumstance even if you don't reflash: Say your atmosphere has experienced a decrease in oxygen significant enough for you to notice that your engine doesn't respond as quickly, etc. The scoops could help you get it back to responding as it would with normal oxygen levels in the atmosphere. It WONT give you "gains." My friend built a scoop for his s2k and he explained it perfectly: It feels like I'm driving at night, but during the day (cooler air at night). In general, you won't receive any gains if you don't reflash, but you may generally feel a more preppy responsiveness.
We've talked about this for the injen short ram intake, and realized people weren't gaining anything but better sound and engine check lights. The thing that's questioning me is that just installing the scoop wouldn't really do anything since the stock intake system is still in place. That intake is designed as a filter to LIMIT the amount of air to enter, so blowing a fan at it (like how a scoop might scoop in air) would be pointless as the stock filter would just do its job and limit it out...... right?
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