when you guys say "drill out the air box", what exactly do you mean? is it just drilling a bunch of holes in the bottom part of the box? i don't want to go and mess up a perfectly good air box.

 

It means: "find someone else to teach you about working on a vehicle."


That myth was debunked MANY years ago by Project MPG. Read the RESULTS pages.

 

How is that a productive answer?
Sounds pretty arrogant to me.
"Find someone else to teach you about working on a vehicle" :wtf:

That is probably why the member is here. And he gets an answer like that???
I followed your link and it didn't explain a darn thing to me. The second time you posted a link I followed to a dead end.
I realize the answer might be buried there somewhere... but it sure isn't clear.

 

That's not a productive answer either....... LoL

 

It means drilling holes on the dirty (inlet) side of the air filter box. If you did it on the other (clean) side, you would let dirty unfiltered air in and harm the engine. This is not an effictive way to gain MPG or performance. Better flowing heads, better flowing (K&N) air filters, cold air intakes, and modified throttle bodies are the best ways to get performance from the intake system.


Steve83 is a cool one, isn't he?

 

There are 2 reasons to read a thread:
To help or to learn.
I was in this thread to learn.
So you see why I was disappointed in the response.

 

"Give a man a fish...
Teach a man to fish..."


But I guess you don't understand THAT, either.

 

thanks stopper, that's all i wanted to know.

 

That would depend on how you term "effective". I did some drilling on my stock airbox, mostly on the bottom and the side away from the exhaust to minimize any hot air entry under light load. With the stock cool air tube in place it will still pull some cool air, but will pull air through the drilled areas under higher load.

Although I've personally never seen MPG gained from intake mods, the truck seems to pull harder at mid to high revs. At a total cost of $0.00 and a few minutes of my time, that's a good bang for the buck even if it gave me .5 HP.



Being that the original poster never stated a desired effect, I'm sorta confused on what myth Steve is busting?



Skaterbro,

If you want to try it, just pay attention to where you drill. Done right, you could easily cover the holes with black tape or something later if you don't want them. As long as you put the holes in the right place nobody would ever see the tape. As an option you could pick up a junkyard airbox and keep the stocker intact.

 

i don't see how it could be a good idea. i just happened to pull my stock intake and noticed there were holes drilled on the bottom side. there are somewhere b/w 15-25 holes and obviously that's not a good idea to do this. just look at your engine bay and imagine all the dirt,water, etc getting pulled into the engine. needless to say they are all taped up and i haven't noticed any difference.

 

306Stang,

As long as the holes are before the filter, you still have the same filtering abilities. All that dirt and grime came from outside air at some point already, and that same air (at least a portion of it) entered the airbox at the same point it got on the engine.

My factory cool air tube inlet would probably be more likely to pull water than the box without a cool air tube. The only downside I could see is if you did it in a way that caused only warmer air to be pulled in. There are several threads on underhood temps here, and they are closer to ambient than the link of the ProjectMPG truck.

Even in the case that it was pulling warmer air, often flow overcomes cooler temps.

 

Did you go to the link? Did you go to the air cleaner page? Did you read footnote #4 & those stats?

The factory engineers know how much air the engine pulls, and they know how many holes it takes to get that much air into the filter. Cutting a bigger hole or more holes does NOT help you or your engine. It just lets more HOT air in, which DEcreases performance.

There's your fish for the day.

 

Maybe you should read your own link. They decided the "winner" was mileage and a slight (4 lb ft) torque improvement.

The HP was highest with the "hot air" system. The one they made barely edged out the factory box with a drop in K&N for horsepower.

If you read the intake temp page, you'll notice the claim that each 10 degrees is good for 1% HP increase. Fairly accurate if you don't account for flow, humidity, barometric pressure or other weather factors.

In this case the 60 degree difference should account for a 6% increase in HP by their claims.

Let's see here...

219 HP from the K&N FIPK sucking the warmer air

219 x .06 = 13.14

219 + 13.14 = 232.14

Result implied by not telling the entire story 232.14 HP
Actual result 211 HP
K&N FIPK result 219 HP

The same is true if you compare the insulated vs stock box, in theory a 4% gain to be had, in reality just over 1%. Being they obviously didn't properly account for flow vs temp, I would question if they are able to properly apply dyno correction factors, computer relearn cycles, or any other factor well enough to even get them to within a 1% margin of error.

Theory vs reality.

 

That is what I got out of it.
I was looking for an article "myth busting".
It was nothing cut and clear as that.
This is why I didn't understand the posting of the link as though it was the 'be all, end all" of the arguement.

 

I wasn't suggesting they're perfect, or that their generalizations are widely applicable - I only pointed out that the raw dyno numbers show that modifying the air filter box doesn't help. It hurts. That doesn't require any relearning or correction. The myth is busted.

There was no argument when I posted that link - just a question. And the link answered the question, if you read the part that directly relates to the question. Everything else is just extra, and really has nothing to do with this thread. But I don't keep a separate link to every part of every article on the net that might be interesting on a BBS - I keep the main link to the front page of that article. Every other time I've posted it, the people who were interested had no trouble finding the parts that applied to their threads.

If you want to pick apart an article, you certainly can. There are mistakes in all of them, and there are parts in all of them that don't apply to EVERY question.