Are throttle body spacers worth it...?

 

no

 

throttle body spacers hurt your performance by slowing down the intake air volocity among other things they will do nothing to help on modern fuel injected engines

 

I'm not so sure, even though we all think the spacers are useless. here's a quote from Sean Hyland's 4.6 book - he is referencing a 1" spacer between the TB elbow and intake manifold on a 4.6 Mustang.

" There is power improvement of 4 - 5 hp to be found with a spacer, likely as a byproduct of increasing the plenum size, which is too small to be ideal."

So, there may be an insignificant gain of a couple of hp.
If it were me, I wouldn't put one on for that small gain on an otherwise unmodded engine.

 

A ton a members at FTW purchased them and then removed them because of a loud, irritating whistling noise they created. However, they all agree that they make really nice paperweights.

 

HaHa... No waste of money. They only GOOD they might be is if your setting up nitrous, you can drill and tap the spacer without drilling your intake.

 

well i already have one on my truck and im convinced to take it off...where can i get some new gaskets for my throttle body after i take the spacer off...?

 

one of the little swirly spacers will do nothing on a port injected engine.swirling the air 1/2 a mile before you get to the fuel will have no effect on attomization as they claim.and the tornado demonstration with the 2 2-liter bottles of water is b.s. water doesn't flow the same as air.they will only cause a restriction ( if they are smaller than your t/b ) and cause turbulence,further restricting airflow.the only way a spacer would do any good is if it is a smooth bore the same diameter as your intake.and even then its gonna be marginal (4 or 5 hp )

 

You're real close to being right on the money. The "helix" style spacers or "swirly" spacers are useless. The comments about restriction are dead on as well. The smooth bore spacers work, up to a point.

The reason why they work is that they increase the volume of the intake manifold cavity before the throttle body. This helps improve bottom and mid-range power. Again, this is up to a point.

I actually installed a set of Hedman hedders and one of their throttle body spacers on my 2005 Chevy 5.3L truck. The spacer is a smooth bore design and looks descent as well. I'll never repeat the actual dyno numbers, but the spacer made more then the "hedders"! Let's also just say that "hedders" gave between 4hp and 6hp to the ground...

 

I have one of the powerade helix spacers and it did nothing cept give me this whistling noise at 2100rpm. I left it on cause i spent 100bucks on it but, after this thread i may try to take it off to see if it will help any. bottomline the ones with the twists are all marketing.

 

HI!... NO!!!!!

 

Although its not on yet, what do you guys think about the bbk throttle body?I have heard it makes a nice difference with an air intake and exhaust and headers.

 

I noticed a difference...

 

challenge: with a 4.6 pulling a 5000lb trailer...put a one inch smooth bore spacer on and then say it doesn't make a difference, they are not gold, but mid-range is certainly helped a bit

 

HI!... I can't remember the exact #'s but I installed a POWERAID TB spacer on my truck years ago and had it dyno tested. I lost TQ and H.P with it and got about 2MPG worst gas milage with it on. Plus the WHISTLING noise at part throttle is very unwanted. I ended up boring the HELIX out of it to match my BBK 75MM TB and then drilled it for my nitrous set-up, converting it to a nitrous plate system. All spacers all usesless.