I was wondering if anyone has gotten any advantage to putting a throttle body spacer on a 5.8. Also has anyone used the K&N cold air kit. I'm talking the kit, not just the filter. I already have a drop in box, but someone is buying me the cold air kit for my birthday, as well as a helix powertower throttle body spacer. I was wondering if the throttle body spacers actually do anything or are they just added volume for the intake? oh and this is in a 90 Bronco

 

Do you have the Mass air flow setup or SPeed density set up on your 5.8?

IF you have MAF then I would suggest that you get that K&N filter out of there. It WILL clog the sensor constantly because of the oiled filter.

If it's speed density then it will work ok with that setup. For the most part Any time you can get colder air into you intake it will help with HP. The same goes for air volume. Think of an engine as a big air compressor. The more air you can shove into it the better it runs to a point. In FI applications there is only so much you can shove in as the air gets measured so I can puch the optimum amount of fuel for the incoming air charge. too much air will need a reprogram of the computer.

The small amount of gain from this shouldn't require anything drastic like this tho.

 

I was reading on the Dodge Magnum forum about a group of the forum members got together and bought bought 4 different cold air intake kits including the K&N kit and they reserved some time on a dyno and then tested them all on the same Dodge Magnum RT with the V8 HEMI. The bottom line was that there was no measurable difference in HP or torque with any of the the CAI kits over the stock set up! This was a surprise to me, since I purchased the K&N Air Charger kit for my Magnum RT and I felt it made an improvement according to my seat-of-the-pants dyno. The one thing this kit did do for my Magnum RT was to improve the look/sound of the engine.

On Horse Power TV they installed a carb spacer on a 350 Chevy engine with a Holley carb and they got a 20+ HP gain according to there engine dyno. Whether the spacer will help your performance or not we will have to wait and see. These kind of tweeks are very application dependent. Like the CAI test results I mentioned above can be application dependent. It could be the stock air intake system was already very good on the Magnum RT and that is why they found no performance improvement with the CAI kits. If they had tried this same experiment on a vehicle that had a poor air intake system they probably would have seen a performance gain. Let us know what you find out when you try these upgrades out.

 

Cujo8's posted results mirror my own. There are no gains to be had with TB spacers on the EFI Fords. These work on some of the controlled fuel leak G(arbage) Motors products because they used a very short carb intake and the spacer adds volume which helps better atomize the fuel. The multi port Ford truck engines have a hugh plenum already, and a seperate injector for each cylinder, same as the Dodge motors, so adding a fraction more volume to it is of no benifit.
Also be aware that the stock intake plumbing on the F150 is already a cold air intake. Unless the K&N includes an enclosed box and plumbing to duct air into it from outside the engine bay it is not a cold air intake.

 

Its like I say everytime I see a TB spacer post....They were designed for a carb for that exact reason. Then someone put one on a GM TBI engine, (which is basically a computer controlled, electronically fired carb) and got the same results. THEN...since they worked so well on a chevy, the bean counters figured they would put them on the market for other engines...figuring theres someone going to be dumb enough and buy one for their EFI Ford engine.
The TB isnt even part of the plenum on EFI Fords, its still part of the air intake ducting.

A person should really use the "Search" button before hitting the "new topic" button

 

Well thanks for all the information. It is going to be a gift so I will not worry too much about the cost. I am looking forward to trying it myself though, just ot see if it actually does anything. I suspect the TB spacer won't but hopefully the K&N set up is a cold air and will do some good. regardless they are gifts and I will put them on anyways. It's always nice ot have a piece of chrome to set off the beauty of a muddy intake.

 

Oh any BTW, I am not stupid. I know that adding this little tiny volume doesn't help, but I was wondering if someone had an opinion that differs, thats all.

 

wasnt knockin you....just saying it how it is. There have been several TB spacer posts over the last month, that is why I said search. Youll find the exact answers that were typed here, along with descriptions of how the product works (in this case the lack there-of).