I would like to know if anyone has experience with the K&N 63 series aircharger system on a Mustang GT. Is the reported 15 hp boost there? More importantly, has anyone had challenges with their Ford warranty as a result of installing this item? Thanks!
You shouldn't have any issues with the warranty unless the kit directly caused the problem. As for the horsepower boost, you will likely be lucky to get half of what the manufacturer claims. They typically get their numbers from a very specific set of parameters that most people never see.
If you want to make a real difference in performance then get a dyno tuned chip. That will improve throttle response and get you around 30 rwhp and about the same amount of torque. Also, rear end gears is another good modification that you can really feel in the seat of your pants. Most of these other mods, on a stock engine, like air intake systems etc. are just fluff and mostly serve to let you point at something when you raise the hood.
15 is way to high, perhaps 2 or 3 at 6,000 RPM, no low end grunt torque improvement at all. not worth it, but the chip is, especially to get rid of some of the throttle lag.
See
While I agree K&N filters are a potentially dangerous and certainly a pain in the ass, this statement "Claims of greatly improved fuel mileage for K&N Filters are bogus." Is absolutely FALSE!
I still have the mileage records of every fill up for a 1994 Taurus SHO that I bought new with 7 miles on it, to over 70,000 miles. This car was a daily driver commuter car that went 70 mostly freeway miles each weekday. The first 25,000 miles it consistently recorded 24.5 MPG each fill up. A K&N air filter was installed into the stock air box, zero other changes. The fuel mileage took an immediate (and documented over 50,000 miles) jump up to
26.5 MPG, and stayed there.I personally would NEVER use a K&N oil bath air filter again. My preference is to filter my intake air as well as I possibly can and I don't think the K&N's do that as well as the stock paper filters.... But throwing out a blanket statement that fuel mileage gains from their use are bogus, is simply bogus. You may or may not like K&N filters, I don't, but for crying out loud, don't post bullshit about them.
K&N air filters do flow better than most OEM filters. The problem with them is they can leave an oil film residue over time if the MAF is installed after the filter. Especially, if the user gets too much oil in the filter after cleaning it. The remedy for this is to clean the MAF element more often, which isn't a big hassle. Where they really pay off is on heavily modified engines (i.e. super/turbo charged) where the OEM filter becomes a bigger restriction due to the greatly increased air flow requirements.
Additionally, I don't think K&N filters decrease the life of an engine due to poor filtering. I have had one on my '89 LX since it was new and it has 150k+ miles (the last 30k-40k miles with a blower) on it and it burns the same amount of oil as when it was new. I have also had the heads off numerous times and see no accelerated wear on the cylinder walls. The original cross hatching is still very visible. Anyone worried about engine wear from using a K&N is splitting hairs regarding their effectiveness verses an OEM/paper filter.
Yep, I now use the dry cleanable Donaldson filters from Amsoil.
But why? Explain how the K&N could increase fuel economy on a fuel injected engine. Except at WOT, the air filter restriction is trivial compared to the throttle restriction. The MAF and other part of the FI control system are measuring the mass of flow through the induction tract, and they don't know whether the flow is restricted by the air filter or the throttle plate. With an older carbureted engine, I can see how a restricted air filter upsets the fuel air ratio and affects gas mileage. This is not the case for modern fuel injected engines. I don't know why your mileage jumped, but I suspect other factors are at play.
I don't believe my opinion is BS. I don't see any reason to expect a K&N filter to increase the fuel economy of a modern fuel injected engine. Not even K&N makes the claim that their filters will increase fuel mileage Go read K&N's carefully worded FAQ on this subject
Ed
While this was certainly true with carbureted engines, there is no reason to think this is the case for modern fuel injected engines. For carbureted engines, a clogged air filter acts like a choke and enriches the mixture because of the effect on air pressure in front of the throttle plates. This reduces the fuel economy. In a modern fuel injected engine, the mixture is not influenced in this way. The amount of fuel injected is determined based on the MAF sensor and other sensors. These sensors can't tell the difference between a restriction to the flow related to the air filter and a restriction to the flow related to the throttle plates. There is no difference as far as the computer is concerned between the restriction of the air filter and the restriction of the throttle plates. The engine speed / power output is determined by the total intake restriction (intake tract plus throttle opening). The only thing a slightly restricted air filter does on a modern engine is require you to open the throttle a slight amount more and reduce the maximum power output. The effect on fuel economy for a modern engine is minimal. I won't claim it is zero, but I doubt you would be able to tell the difference unless the filter was absurdly restrictive.
Ed
A dirty filter will lower gas mileage on EFI engines too. Instead of going into a long rebuttal I'll just provide a few links to some credible web sites.
I'm not saying a K&N filter will give a noticeable improvement in gas mileage over an OEM unit but with all things being equal the engine with a more efficient filter will perform better. Do you think an engine with a dirty air filter would pass an emissions test? If so then why not?
Using proper farming techniques, top soil will last forever.
No it won't. It'll promote farming, which in turn will keep our top soil from being paved over/ruined. To cut your food costs, just cut out the convenience -- i.e. eating out, packaged meals, etc.
Remember to add in to your calculations the cost of you/us to keep the Middle East stable.
We have to cut our dependence on oil. (We've needed to since the
70's.) The demand for/cost of oil is only going to intensify in the future with so many counties becoming industrialized. And with this increased demand there's going to be added pressure to control the spicket. This means at some point a couple/few of the big boys -- US, China, Russia, India, or some other nuclear country -- is going to get into a fight and the results won't be pretty.Patrick
Yes but I'd bet that by "dirty filter" they mean clogged. I can see Ed's point here but there is probably a point at which the clog becomes so bad the electronics can not compensate. I once bought a 1977 Thunderbird for $50. It would not start, the guy and 4 friends tried to get it started to get it home. When I went to get it I had a battery, some gas and tools. It was full of gas, I cranked, smelled gas and popped the hood. Took off the air breather and put it in the trunk, started it and drove home to all their amazement. Three months and $500 later I sold it for $4500. It had 267K miles on it. The buyer was still driving it 4 years later. :oP
Clogged or mildly dirty, it is all variants of the same thing. That is a restriction to air flow.
It just won't stay in the same place. Erosion from farms is far worse than from land development activities. Top soil can be depleted to the point it can't grow much which is why farmers so much fertilizer to their land.
It has already increased food prices world wide. The UN's food budget is going through the roof because of the demand of biofuels.
... or to keep a nuke from going off on the Mall of Washington, DC.
IMO, we are heading in the right direction. It is just too slow for my liking. China and India has eight times our population and just think how much oil they will consume if they develop even half as much as we have today. We have no option but to change. The funny thing is I think the general population in the USA wants it and is ready for it but our government can't get their shit together to make it happen.
Countries can't fight each other anymore. Their will be no winners, only losers. It is one of the benefits of a global economy. If China blows us up who will buy their cheap goods and where will they get wheat, corn etc. to feed 1.5 billion people? IMO, terrorism is a much bigger threat than war between nations.
Of course a 1977 Thunderbird had a carburetor...
Ed
None of those sites listed states that the effect of a dirty air filter on gas mileage applies to FI engines with MAF sensors. It seems rather likely to me that those sites are merely repeating what was true with carburated engines as still being true, without retesting or even remodeling.
Do you have any URLs for tests done with modern engines?
"Michael Johnson" wrote in message news:dJSdncAmpLJM0xDanZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com...
If by credible, you mean sites that are repeating their granddaddy's advice, then I guess they qualify. Can you show me one that actual has any data to support your claim? Or at least an explanation of why a slightly restrictive air filter might reduce the fuel economy of a modern fuel injected engine? These sites are just repeating the same sort of maintenance information that has been out there for 70 years. Things have changed.
Sigh, if you are talking about a completely plugged air filter, I agree that the fuel economy may be affected (heck it might actually increase since the maximum engine power will be limited). However, for a modern fuel injected car operated in a normal environment with a filter changed at reasonable intervals the difference in fuel economy between a "new" and "used" filter approaches zero. The same is true for a proper paper filter and a K&N filter. The only sensor in front of the throttle plate(s) is the MAF. It is called a Mass Air Flow sensor because it is measuring the mass of air flowing through the intact tract, not pressure or density, or temperature. The throttle position sensor is at the throttle and measures it position. All of the other sensors are behind the throttle plate. So think about what the various sensors see when the filter is slightly more restrictive. The MAF is measuring the mass of air flowing through the system. It doesn't measure pressure, so it won't be affected because the flow is reduced my a slightly higher restriction at the filter (we are talking about tenths of a psi difference or less). If the filter is slightly more restrictive, the throttle may need to be slightly more open to achieve the same power output. And I mean slightly. Throttle position sensors are not particularly precise. They are a gross position indicator. I doubt the difference in the throttle opening related to a slightly more restrictive filter is significant enough to affect the engine parameters at all. All the other engine sensors are after the throttle plate. They will not be affected by the restriction in the air filter any more than by the much larger restriction of the throttle plate. AND remember you have O2 sensors that feed data back to the PCM that is used to correct for variations in the other sensors. So even if the restriction of the air filter was severe enough to affect the other sensors, the feedback from the O2 sensors should allow the PCM to adjust the fuel trim to compensate.
As long as the filter is in good shape, it will have no significant effect on the ability to pass an emissions test. See above for the reasons. I won't argue that a K&N might provide a slight performance increase at WOT. It very well might. But for anything but large throttle openings, the throttle plate is by far the most significant restriction in the intake tract. The filter is almost not there as far as air flow is concerned until the throttle is nearly wide open. Again, I am only talking about modern fuel injected engines. For older carbureted engines, a restrictive air filter would definitely significantly reduce fuel economy. And the situation is not clear to me if you are talking about some of the early speed density type fuel injection systems (systems without a MAF). For normal sorts of air filter restriction the PCM of these types of systems would be able to compensate for a restrictive air filter. However, for a very restrictive filter, they may not. However, as far as I know, no one has sold a car with a speed density only system for a decade.
By the way, the DIY Basics sight you referenced is loony
Ed
Care to sight some back up for this. I suppose it might be true on a total tonnage basis, but probably not on a per unit of land basis. My farm has been in constant cultivation for over 300 years. I would argue we add fertilizer to replace the nutrients removed when we harvest crops. Some crops remove more nutrient than others. One of the nice things about ethanol production is that it does not actually increase the nutrient drain. Ethanol is carbon (from CO2) and hydrogen (from H2O). After you make the ethanol, the dried mash can be used as a high quality animal feed. The animal waste can be used as fertilizer to return the nutrients to the soil (well except for those that are used to make the meat and milk products humans consume).
The real problem is the increase in consumption of meat in developing countries. And despite all the whining in that article, food prices are not at "historic highs" if you correct them for inflation. In fact, they are barely above depression era prices when corrected for inflation. My Father was selling corn for over $3.50 a bushel in 1975. I got that much for the first time this year. Given that almost everything I buy cost three times as much now as it did in 1975, I am not even close to making the kind of money from farming that my Father did (despite farming almost twice as many acres and using half as much labor).
Ed
The very fact that the farmer has to add fertilizer to the soil means the methods he deploys to grow crops depletes the topsoil of nutrients. What happens to his crops if no fertilizer is added? The other component is that typical modern farming techniques cause erosion on a massive scale. Promoting biofuels just creates more tillable land and more erosion and more demand for fertilizer. IMO, biofuels use more energy than is practical for the amount of fuel produced. There are much better energy sources like geothermal, tides, ocean currents, solar etc. that have much better efficiency and MUCH LESS impact on the environment. After all, one of the main points of using alternative energy is to create less impact on the environment.
Our standard of living is higher now than in the depression or even
1975. If food prices climb substantially then our standard of living declines. IMO, this is the real issue. Sure most of us can buy higher priced food but then we have to drop something else off our wish list. This will ripple through the economy and could have catastrophic effects. Plus, poor people that barely make ends meet are the hardest hit by increasing food prices. Having biofuels in my tank isn't worth more people going hungry because the price of bread is too high for them to buy it.
Maybe the way to do this is to find a web site that says a dirty air filter will not decrease gas mileage on an EFI engine.
Does an engine under a heavy load run richer than one that is under a light load? The ECU has load tables that it uses to help calculate what it believes the optimum air fuel ratio should be taking into account the conditions it thinks the engine is operating under. What the computer thinks is optimum isn't always 14.7:1. The computer expects the operator to keep the filters fresh and a dirty air filter makes the ECU think the engine is under a heavier load and thus changes the target A/R to run richer than normal. This in turn reduces gas mileage. ECUs aren't clairvoyant and can determine the degree to which an air filter is dirty. It only takes the input from ALL the sensors and using preprogrammed tables makes A/F adjustments (and many other) to the conditions it perceives the engine to be operating under. Determining engine load is a very important component is what it uses to set the target A/F at any given moment. This is why they put throttle position sensors on engines nowadays. The new Mustangs are somewhat different in that there is no longer a direct wire connection to the throttle plate. The computer senses the position of the accelerator pedal and then sets the throttle opening accordingly.
I have a TwEECer chip in my '89 LX that lets me program almost all of the EEC-IV operating parameters. I know load tables exist and they affect A/F as do many other sensor readings. There is a lot more going on in the ECU than reading air in and making a simple computation for fuel required. Things like engine acceleration rate, load, etc. come into play in a big way. When something like a dirty air filter causes readings of the throttle position sensor to be out of the range it expects for a given driving condition then gas mileage can, and will, be affected. The computer doesn't know the air filter is dirty and tries to run the engine in a manner that isn't optimum for gas mileage. It thinks you are doing something like climbing a hill, or accelerating, and delivers fuel accordingly.
The A/F doesn't remain constant across the entire load range an engine can experience. As the load increases the target A/F decreases. This is programmed into the load data tables of ECUs. If the A/F didn't decrease then cylinder temperatures would get too high and start melting things like piston tops.
To further make my point does an engine get better gas mileage going downhill or uphill at the same speed? Is that because in one condition the engine is under a heavier load than the other? If the rpm rate is the same for each condition then why is the mileage different? It is because the throttle has to be open more going uphill to get the air necessary to make the power needed to overcome the elevation increase. The data tables for engine load the computer uses are very specific to the size of the throttle body put on the car. It relies on these tables in conjunction with throttle position readings to determine what target A/F is used from the load table. It also uses the O2 readings to fine tune the A/F but only to meet the target A/F from the load table. A dirty filter requires an increase in throttle opening which triggers the computer to operate from the higher end of the load tables. Hence the engine runs richer and gets lower mileage.
So if the filter is dirty enough then it will affect whether the emissions test is passed? This means the A/F ratio isn't optimum, doesn't it? If what you are saying is true then the computer should compensate and make the A/F optimum thus allowing it to pass the test.
You keep saying for "normal sorts of air filter restrictions" when a restriction is a restriction. A filter just doesn't not affect mileage one day and then suddenly becomes dirty enough to affect it the next. It is a gradual progression that happens continuously and in most circumstances is too slow for the driver to perceive.
Also, the basic operating parameters of an engine doesn't change because it is fuel injected and computer controlled. The computer actually mimics the old carburetors, governors, points etc. by using sensor readings. The ECU controlling today's engines isn't a HAL 9000 that thinks like a human. If it is getting garbage input from the sensors then it spits garbage out to control the engine. The effect of a dirty air filter on a fuel injected engine is the same as one with a carburetor. On both engines the dirty filter puts the engine under load and it is this that decreases gas mileage in both cases.
I searched the PDF for "gas mileage" "mileage" and "mpg" and got no hits. It's a little too long for me to read through but it seems to address filtering efficiency for removing particulates and not the effect of dirty air filters on gas mileage.
This also seems to be addressing filter efficiency for removing particulates and not gas mileage efficiency.
I have no doubt that a K&N filter lets more particulates by (and therefore more air itself) than an OEM filter. Where the debate starts is whether is has any appreciable impact on engine longevity for the average vehicle. I believe it doesn't based on my own experience. My '89 LX had had the same filter installed for over 130k miles and I had the heads off at around 150k miles and saw no appreciable cylinder wall wear. It also doesn't noticeably use any more oil than when it was new.
The air filter debate is similar to the synthetic verses conventional oil debate. IMO, there is no appreciable difference in wear from using any oil that is changed every 3,000-4,000 miles. The contaminants never get a chance to build up in the oil to cause a problem whether the oil is synthetic or conventional.
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