Something else I happened to think of, on the note of the CAI.
My first pick up was a '75 Chevy step side pick up. When we were 19 or 20 years old, my good friend and I drove it out to California because he'd gotten a job out there and needed a lift, and I didn't have anything better to do. I stuck around for a few weeks and tried to find a job but it just didn't work out, so I used what money I had left to drive back home. If I remember right, that truck averaged about 12, maybe 13 miles to the gallon. I pretty much made the drive home straight, and on the night I was driving thru Nebraska, it was a very cool summer night. On a 16 gallon tank, I drove from Kimball NE to Kearney NE- a distance of about 250 miles. Assuming I normally got about 13 mpg, that's only 208 miles- far short of the distance I drove on one tank. I talked with my dad about this "amazing change" in mpg that night, and he said that he'd heard before that cold air is better for engines.
That being said, I don't know for sure that it was the cold air that explains the sudden change in mpg- I wasn't exactly recording information on the conditions that night. Maybe I'd just held such a steady foot on the gas pedal that the engine had a very good run. Or maybe the lack of hills in Nebraska made a huge difference.
Anyway, that was a bit of tangent- sorry, I just haven't thought about that night for a long time. I'm not sure what year they began doing it, but most modern vehicles [and this may depend on the makers] utilize CAI's for keeping the computers cooled down. Heat is a bad thing for a computer, so by routing the intake thru the computer box they are keeping the computer cooled down and preventing it from burning out. I don't know if a CAI would be of much use on older vehicles tho.
The CAI does not route air over the ECU. The ECU is usually inside the vehicle or on the fender. While heat is bad for any computer, the CAI does not cool it.
heres one i would like put to the test. anyone ever heard of the 'cool can'? what you do is take a tin can, like the old smaller folgers coffee cans (not the cambells soup can they are too small) and you coil copper line inside it from bottom to top, and connect to your fuel system as close as you safely can to where it enters carb/fuelrail. fill the can with icecubes and go racin. supposedly it cools down the gas ie making it more dense, and you get more fuel in the chamber.
not sure if it really works, but i remember the old guy next door telling me about how he used to do that on his stock cars and it was 'amazing'
heres one i would like put to the test. anyone ever heard of the 'cool can'? what you do is take a tin can, like the old smaller folgers coffee cans (not the cambells soup can they are too small) and you coil copper line inside it from bottom to top, and connect to your fuel system as close as you safely can to where it enters carb/fuelrail. fill the can with icecubes and go racin. supposedly it cools down the gas ie making it more dense, and you get more fuel in the chamber.
not sure if it really works, but i remember the old guy next door telling me about how he used to do that on his stock cars and it was 'amazing'
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