(Source: Truck Trend)
This kind of stuff pisses me off:
Truck Trend used K&N's
chassis dynamometer to measure the difference in peak horsepower and torque before & after swapping out the OEM intake tract & filter for the aftermarket parts.
And then they "
hit the road for our own evaluation" of MPG and subjective performance changes.
Fools!
Quote:
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we mapped out a 52-mile mountain loop outside Los Angeles with various stretches of two-lane highway, some freeway, a stretch of tight twisties, ending with a series of gentle curves, ranging in elevation from 1800 feet to 4200 feet above sea level. Our before and after runs were done just several days apart with an average speed within 4/10th of a mph of each other, with very similar temperature and road conditions. According to the on-board computer on our F-150 that can calculate instant and average mpg data (reset at the beginning of each of our runs, right after we topped off the tank), we averaged close to 10-percent-better fuel economy with the K&N Intake Kit, improving from 19.2 mpg to 21.0 mpg.
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That's an invalid test, and they should be ashamed of themselves for using it as a basis for promoting the K&N products.
The kicker: on top of their misunderstanding of how to do basic testing, they then use their flawed results as justification for advocating that readers spend about $350 for the K&N parts, because...
Quote:
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with the gas savings alone, the intake kit pays for itself in 16 months
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What they should have done:
Why the freak didn't they just use the truck's "instant and average MPG data"
while still on the dynamometer?
They could have easily run a range of A-B-A comparisons, avoiding all the other confounding variables they experienced in their on-road "test", and ended up with
valid data. And it would have taken less time than the on-road silliness!
At best, they're just ignorant. At worst, they're shills for K&N (who, I presume are regular advertisers).
Full article:
More Power and Better Fuel Economy For Our 2009 Ford F-150 - Tech - Truck Trend