thottle body spacers

[jeepbme]

Worth the money?? One better then another??
avg hp increase / torque?

 

[BLSXJ]

S E A R C H

 

[JONNYD]

Ebay, cheap! You can get them for less than $30.00, giver a whirl.

 

[red91]

Worth the money?? One better then another??
avg hp increase / torque?

1. NO.
2. See #1
3. debatable.

4. If you do one the swirly effect doesn't do much, just bore it out to 62 mm and do the same for your throttle body.

Then you'll have something.

Wanna know how I know ? Got the AIRAID TB spacer. Get a little kick at about 2500 RPM torque wise, little in the HP department, no increase in milage. Mines gonna get bored here in a couple of weeks.

2 words... SNAKE OIL. Get yours today.

 

[Darky]

S E A R C H

also, search. There's at least a million threads about this.

What you may want to try is the Tornado. You just put it in your air box tube and it'll boost your power and mileage.


Here's a couple links to the site and a review:
Site
Review

 

[jeepbme]

yep ...ive seen it on tv, and i understand the reasoning for these but i cant figure out how the spacer would help or increase anything if it still has the same size opening or intake width

 

[Cjmartz2k]

I think of the tornado as more snake oil than the spacers. Maybe on a Carb. car, but not fuel injected for sure. Same thing for that helix bore crap on the spacers.

 

[coltrain]

I just had the machine shop at my work make one for me. They just used a scrap peice of 1" aluminum. I haven't installed it yet, so I can't say if it made any difference. I figure that for free it was worth a try.

 

[creepnjeeper]

Spend a little more money and get a bored out TB, you can get into one for $130 and have a lot more results!

 

[bigwhitey]

Worth the money?? One better then another??
avg hp increase / torque?

CRAP. Even the bored to 62mm with helix design that I bought for my bored TB. Skip all the performance hoopslaps and save up for lower gears.

 

[casm]

What you may want to try is the Tornado. You just put it in your air box tube and it'll boost your power and mileage.

OK, let's think about this logically for a moment (and if I'm off-base on any of this, please correct me - I'm not a fluid/gas dynamics engineer, but have done some reading up on these things).

Things like the Tornado, Turbonator, and others work on similar principle: by swirling the air at the intake, apparently offering better fuel/air atomisation. There are two faults with this approach:

1) The swirl effect is unlikely to make it all the way from the vortex device to the intake valves at anything near a significant ratio compared to stock.

The effect is at its strongest immediately behind the device. As the airflow travels through the intake, throttle body, valves, and into the cylinder bores, distance and bends in its path all combine to undo any induced swirl effect. Bear in mind that these are *static* devices - they don't provide any ram-air effect. If they did, they'd have a better chance of maintaining the swirl under pressure to the cylinders.

Even then, there's still one final and previously-mentioned bottleneck: the valves. They ultimately determine the volume of mixed air and fuel that can be taken in during their open cycle; usually, this is considerably less than the volume of air that can be drawn in via the intake. Once again, the airflow slows down and the vortex is lost.

Now, lest I give the impression that I'm saying these are utterly useless, allow me to disabuse that notion right here. However, these things cannot - by design - offer massive breathing gains as there are too many variables at play to allow them to do that.

2) If this thing ever - for *any* reason - breaks, you're going to suffer some rather unpleasant engine damage.

Think about that for a second... Most of these items fit into the air hose *after* the air cleaner. Let's say one leaves the factory with a hairline fracture in <insert critical component here>. After n months of operation, that fracture finally expands and gives way, sending chunks of metal down the path of least resistance. In this case, that happens to be in the direction of the throttle body, valves, and cylinders - and they're happily helped along by the existing airflow they were apparently helping to assist. Not good.

Now, to be fair: I have never run one of these items (mainly for the reasons outlined above) so am purely speculating here. If one fell into my lap as a test unit I'd be more than happy to try it out, but by no means would I actually spend money on one. Even then I'd want an iron-clad guarantee against potential damage.

 

[MaXJohnson]

did you ever consider that BlackSport96's post was a joke?

as is the tornado

if they weren't so expensive, we could screw them to our wheels

 

[Dr. Dyno]

I've had mine for almost five years and I'd say it's worth it, provided you buy it cheaply from e-bay for under $50. You won't feel a ~2hp/3lbft gain in the SOTP so you might think it's a waste of time, but the ~1mpg gain is certainly worth going for especially with rising gas prices these days.

 

[MaXJohnson]

... ~1mpg gain is certainly worth going for ...

you have stars in your eyes

 

[Dr. Dyno]

you have stars in your eyes

I don't think so. I gained 0.8mpg (average fuel consumption over many tankfuls) after installing the spacer so after 60 weeks, it had paid for itself with the fuel that I'd saved. The spacer cost me $50 so for me, it was money well spent.

 

[Bloose]

I don't think so. I gained 0.8mpg (average fuel consumption over many tankfuls) after installing the spacer so after 60 weeks, it had paid for itself with the fuel that I'd saved. The spacer cost me $50 so for me, it was money well spent.

Someone asked how a spacer can work. It does 2 things,

1) increases plenum volume

2) creates a longer plenum (simular to a Tunnel ram just on a much smaller scale)

I could see the spacer possibly having "some" effect but that may depend largely on the type of driving you do (freeway vs. city) vehicle speed and engine RPM. I wouldn't discount it but I would expect everyones results to be the same either.

As for the tornado they are a Joke!!! Nothing at all can be gained by creating a "swirl" in the intake plenum other than the slight possiblity of slightly decreasing fuel dropout in a carbed engine at idle with a large runner intake. Given this possible very rare case these companies likely create the worst possible situation and then install their product and use that for their advertising claims. Another thing I thing that has given rise to these products if the talk of "swirl". Inside of the cylinder that does very much for burn efficiency and reducing detonation by keeping the cylinder temp even. Once the swirling intake charge enters the CC and then is compressed the piston and CC shape create thier own swirl without regaurd for what it was doing in the intake.

HTH,
B-loose

 

[MaXJohnson]

Someone asked how a spacer can work. It does 2 things,

1) increases plenum volume

2) creates a longer plenum (simular to a Tunnel ram just on a much smaller scale)

I could see the spacer possibly having "some" effect but that may depend largely on the type of driving you do (freeway vs. city) vehicle speed and engine RPM. I wouldn't discount it but I would expect everyones results to be the same either.
HTH,
B-loose

X2

1) correct
2) meaningless in this application

Larger plenums can result in added power in the upper RPM band and typically reduce throttle response.

You shouldn't expect much change with a 5% increase in plenum volume. If there is any appreciable change, it would effect volumetric efficiency, but only in a narrow RPM range. Better efficiency results in an increased volume of air drawn into the cylinder. More air requires ...

more fuel to maintain proper air/fuel ratio.

The increase in efficiency results in the ability to produce more power from a given displacement. It doesn't equate to lower fuel consumption which is a function of the work that needs to be performed. That work consists of overcoming inertia, rolling and drivetrain friction and aero drag, none of which are reduced due to an increase in plenum volume.

Improved cylinder scavenging may have a slight effect on fuel consumption, but nothing near the 5% improvement claimed.

Given that the typical method to calculate mileage depends on gas pump auto-shut off design, city/highway driving cycle, driver input, temperature and other weather factors, state of tune, fuel grade, etc., etc., etc., a 5% margin of error doesn't seem out of line.

.8MPG is within that margin of error.

YMMV

 

[Dr. Dyno]

X2
.8MPG is within that margin of error.
YMMV

Ordinarily I'd agree with you but in my case, I averaged my consumption figures over several thousand miles so the difference, while small, is significant. I fill up the tank right to the brim with the neck full each time I go to the gas station, fuel grade is the same (91 octane), driving style is the same, and city/highway driving mix is the same. The only change is the spacer.

 

[MaXJohnson]

Ordinarily I'd agree with you but in my case, I averaged my consumption figures over several thousand miles so the difference, while small, is significant. I fill up the tank right to the brim with the neck full each time I go to the gas station, fuel grade is the same (91 octane), driving style is the same, and city/highway driving mix is the same. The only change is the spacer.

I don't doubt your mileage claim, but I'm curious as to how you would explain a mileage increase from a change that ordinarily would not effect fuel consumption. A 5% increase in plenum volume that may contribute to a slight increase in power in a narrow part of the upper RPM band which is a very minor part of your drive cycle. It doesn't add up. Increasing power does not automatically result in an increase in mileage. In fact, more often just the opposite.

My first reaction is that you've made so many changes to your rig that it would be difficult to attribute a change in mileage to a specific modification.

 

[jdraylob2002]

ok.. so in the end, what are we talking about here?

To get reasonably mild power increases to a stock setup, should it ideally go like this?

K/N style high flow intake setup
62mm bored TB
TB spacer

High Flow cat
performance cat back exhaust system


Are we now in a more reasonable field of increased performance?
Or is this worth it? time/cost/trouble