RonW
*GenIII*
4/14/2001
13:14:52
|  RE: Air Filter Article
IP: Logged
Message:
You present an interesting article. Most of the reason for leaving the OEM setup behind is not because it's OEM. It's dyno proven that stock systems have a tendency to NOT provide enough air tothe system. You might alleviate that slightly with a K&N drop in but I doubt you'll help much.
If you could keep the temperature of the air you were introducing to your engine at 45º and unrestricted you would have optimum conditions for intake. The cooler the air the denser the air, the more oxygen you present to your engine for a given volume of air. You already understand the less turbulence the better. Why is that? You really need to understand how much your engine wants to breathe, enough to suck something right down the throttle bores if you don't have it clamped down. You're right about another thing as well. How much air do I really need to give it. Well, that all depends on how much you fix up your engine to allow it to breathe as freely as possible. If all you do is intake you have many points along the way that become bottlenecks.
The next thing after intake is throttle body. The stock TB has many imperfections that cause a loss of airflow. Those things have been corrected by aftermarket TB's, some which rework the stock TB and others that have been redesigned from scratch.
Beyond this, you go into the heads, which includes the valve train, cam, and roller rockers. All of these items, in stock form, have their bottlenecks, and unless you free them up, your engine cannot take all the air you can give it.
Beyond these enhancements, your engine is now inhaling very efficiently, however, it cannot exhale efficiently. Now, you have to work on exhaust valves, exhaust headers, the catalytic converter, and the exhaust system itself.
Now, that you can inhale and exhale efficiently, you need to upgrade your PCM to deliver fuel with all that air and advance your timing to use the air/fuel effectively.
Then, there's powertrain upgrades to make it more efficient, like a custom valve body and torque converter. 'nuff said.
Back to your intake....forget your stock one..if you have 14" on top and you have a cold air induction hood that encloses that element, then, you're pretty efficient. That hood should also have a cowl in back to pull some of that engine heat out from under the hood. If you don't have a hood like that, then your K&N Gen II FIPK is absolutely the ideal candidate.
Good luck to you.
Ron
00 PB SLT QC 4X2 5.9 46RE 3.92 LSD
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