Possible 6% mpg gain from adding a cone filter...Ford Focus...
 

Looks like maybe a 2 mpg (6%) gain from just adding a cone filter. I've had this filter laying around for a few years from another car....didn't think it would help since I already had the restrictive cold air intake nozzle removed from the pipe going to the front...and also the resonator box was removed allowing air from under the hood into the filter box.

IAT is probably close to the same as before...around 10F higher at 70F...3-4F higher at 90F vs ambient....so it's not likely a warm air issue.

Took 1/2 tank or so for the ECU to adjust.

Filter is laying on a piece of foam....OD of intake pipe and the filter pipe are the same...thus the tape and clamp. Just clears the hood.

http://www.nonags.org/members/nijqk/ZX3ConeFilter.jpg

I am glad you put "possible" in the title.

My mistake. I meant GUARANTEED. :thumbup:

I once owned a Pontiac Vibe GT, aka Toyota Matrix (rebadged!). When I was younger I installed a K&N cold air intake full air system. I did see a noticeable jump in FE along with POWER, which younger me was all about. A few months later at an autozone I was bored and looked in the K&N book hanging off a chain and they were claiming a 15hp boost. I never tested the claim with anything more sophisticated than the seam of my pants. I do know smaller cars are choked by the EPA, my buddy got a intake system for his Ranger's 3L V6 and didn't see much difference.

Please do more testing because if this is true, I'll have to install one of these on my focus.

Noticed a similar increase on my intrepid when made they switch 6 years ago. I assumed the engine had slightly less vaccum under acceleration, maybe adding a little torque.

What caused the improvement? Removing the cold air inlet? Removing the resonator? Changing from a probably dirty filter to a likely clean filter? A combination of all 3 actions? What?

So.... in other words, you don't know whether IAT has changed.

wrong
 

The K&N filter may do one thing. It may increase max hp. It will do nothing mileage wise for any vehicle with a throttle, since any increase in flow will simply mean that you will close the throttle a little to compensate.

This really ain't rocket surgery.

I think that a low restriction air filter might make a bit of a difference on a diesel as it will lower pumping losses.

We have been down this road 1000 times already. Unicorn. :rolleyes:

The EPA has done studies and found out that a dirty filter affects power not FE
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/pdfs/...02_26_2009.pdf

But changing out the OE tiny little air tubes for the cold air intake vast gaping cavity vastly improved airflow. So more air means better volumetric efficiency. And if you P&G, more power means getting to speed sooner, which translate to more gliding and less pulsing.

This mod only helps FE if you're using fuel line magnets. ;)

It will help if it changes the MAF signal in the right direction. Aside from turbulence factors, air filters sometimes cause the engine to lean out slightly, as the ECU is receiving more air than it thinks it's receiving.

Air filters can and sometimes DO change economy. The problem is they usually do so for reasons that have nothing to do with the filter media and everything to do with the shape of the filter and the filter installation.

Until 0.0000001 seconds later when the ECU sees the O2 sensor value change and makes a fuel trim correction, netting absolutely no A/F difference at all.

Someone posted that he saw an mpg gain from this on a forum dedicated to the Focus...took me a long time to try it due to believing it had little chance of working. I already had what I thought was a good flow...don't exactly run the car a full throttle a lot...taxing the intake system. You can buy these cone filters at parts stores for not too much (the off brands)...installing it like I did means it is easily reversible.

All the brilliant analysis as to why it won't work is FUNNY. :cool: Just like watching people TAKE A DUMP. :D

cons? Noisy if you floor it...not the best filtering in a dusty area?

I wouldn't want to encourage anyone to improve their mpg...it's like pushing drugs. :snail:

It depends on the car and the filter. It is not that instant, as it requires the O2 readings to wander significantly in closed loop running. Won't affect idle, WOT or anything else, not unless the discrepancy is so big it throws the long term fuel trim completely out of whack and the car starts to adapt over the next few hundred miles.

And even then, with the limited fidelity of narrowband O2 sensors that come on most cars as stock, sometimes, the car can't adapt. Or, it maladapts, which is how the Mazdaspeed brand CAI causes CELs on the Mazdaspeed3 and 6, and how certain cheap aftermarket filters with MAF adapters cause Subarus to blow up.

The better modern brand name filters and CAIs are tested extensively to ensure they don't cause the LTFTs to wander, even when they lean out the intake charge.

look, you have 281 posts, so you have been here awhile.
Let me be blunt.
you'tr not a neebie.
post up an aba test or take the wrath you have coming.
What's funny is your clueless post.

Well...you can't have it both ways? Time will tell...no point in arguing about it.....

1st tank I thought it was a refill issue...but gas gauge is accurate at 1/2 tank mark vs trip meter....looking like the gain will stick.

I do A-B tests only.

I'm not a newbee...but I am clueless! :rolleyes:

mcrews is referring to this idea:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ery-11445.html

(Members who have been around here a while should by now expect skepticism in proportion to the validity of the testing method used.)

I'm not saying that you didn't get a 6% improvement because of your filter.

I'm saying that you have no clue how your filter installation caused that 6% improvement. Furthermore, I'm saying that your guesswork (you did say "IAT is probably close to the same as before...around 10F higher at 70F...3-4F higher at 90F vs ambient....so it's not likely a warm air issue.") isn't helping matters any.

You need to be more rigorous in your statements. It's fine that you make initial observations, but you need to be able to back them up with verifiable data. Otherwise, as another poster pointed out, you might as well be installing fuel magnets.

I'm not saying that the gains suspectnumber961 is experiencing are accurate, but I feel that the rest of you guys are too quick to turn it down. I understand the need for accurate testing and I want it too.

The factory air intake set up on a ford Focus is very long, winding, and restrictive.
http://www.myfordfocus.com/images/se...manual/cai.gif
a short-ram intake like the one installed in this case may actually be producing a gain on this particular car. I'm not saying it's the filter itself, I'm just saying that on this particular car, this mod seems to help. Countless people swear by MPG gains from air filters like this in focus based forums, so there may be something to it.

t-vago- The ford focus uses a MAF sensor so warm air intakes have no affect.

Again, I'm in no way endorsing or refuting the gains, I'm just trying to find an explanation

Boy, that's a generalization sorely in need of a good kick...

Just because some MAF cars have not benefitted from a WAI due to compensation by their engine computers, that does not mean that every single MAF car out there cannot benefit. Wouldn't it be surprising to find out that this model of Ford Focus actually did benefit from a WAI? In terms of improving fuel economy, at least the WAI has a good sound basis in theory, whereas ram air does not even have that.

Then again, with regard to the OP's improvement, I guess we'll never know how that happened, now, will we?

And again I must point out that I did not say that the OP did not actually see any gains. I said, and I will continue to say, that the OP has no clue how the gains were made.

I actually got that generalization from this very forum :eek:

Thanks for the info, before I go spreading that idea around like fact. Everyone I have talked to said it would be no use on my car

Well, to be fair, it is a somewhat supportable generalization. So far, none of the (admittedly few) MAF cars, which have tested here so far, have shown any improvement with a HAI.

That isn't to say that MAF cars in general will not show improvement, though.

It's more believable, actually, for a MAF-equipped car to show improvement than a MAP-equipped car... especially as so many MAP-equipped cars nowadays adjust to any filter changes by dialling back power right away.

Air filter changes are like voodoo nowadays. We tested a MAP-equipped car with a short-ram and it made 5% extra at redline and nearly 10% less at 3k rpm (cruising), with AFRs going pig rich in the area of loss but slightly leaner (as you'd expect) at the area with gains. Even with the stock box in, replacing the filter with a less restrictive medium resulted in the same change.

Computers. Meh. They're too smart. :p

this particular post is false , completely
 

document this -
if you can - do not show some horse poop unverifiable alleged trace on an alleged dyno , allegedly with the car in question

show me graphed scan data
you can use enhanced data for the car or simple generic obd2

ready begin

IF you are not fibbing the calculated load value at WOT will be 5% greater with your modification than without , STFT or real time lambda will be adding slightly -
do not BS me lad - i will know

We tested a MAP-equipped car with a short-ram and it made 5% extra at redline and nearly 10% less at 3k rpm (cruising), with AFRs going pig rich in the area of loss but slightly leaner (as you'd expect) at the area with gains.

http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/76/temp2da.jpg
By niky_tamayo at 2012-07-02

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/7527/temp3e.jpg
By niky_tamayo at 2012-07-02

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/4107/tempdz.jpg
By niky_tamayo at 2012-07-02
(Didn't really want to share these, because they're for an unpublished article, but you asked nicely... :D )

This was a media test unit that I brought over to a friend's shop. Perks of being both an autojourno and an aftermarket seller, he gets to test out and prototype intakes, exhausts and headers that they build in-house to gauge whether they're worth stocking for sale. Pipe routing is a big part of the package development*. Obviously, this one was a bust. Can't sell customers an intake that loses power in the area most people drive in every day.

Not shown is the AFR trace or the dyno where we put the stock piping back in and simply removed the stock air filter element... but that was exactly halfway between the aftermarket and stock traces. The AFR trace showed an area where the engine goes pig rich at cruising rpms at full throttle under load (this is a brake dyno). In both aftermarket and no filter tests, the AFRs dip into even richer territory at said area, even though it runs leaner (as you'd expect) in others. My theory was that the engine expects a fat load of air from the intake resonator at 3-4k rpm, but we still showed that loss in power with the stock induction (sans filter) back in place... so perhaps it's simply a failsafe to keep the engine cool and happy while under load on the highway. Shame. The car can do 30 km/l. (officially 26 highway) I bet it could do much better with a retune.

This is obviously not one of those cars that dials back power to stock levels across the board when you change out the induction system... since the dynos actually show power gains... but I can actually dig up said dynos if you feel like it.

These tests help the shop determine what aftermarket parts they will offer for sale or strike off their list. It's thanks to these that they don't offer cone filters for most MAP-equipped modern turbodiesels (no gain, no point) or cat-backs for some mass-market cars (no gain, no point). While they could probably bundle such things with a retune or a chip that stops the stock ECU from neutering gains, there's not enough of a market here to bother.

EDIT: We didn't attach an OBD reader to the car... but there was little need and no time to do a comprehensive test... it's a relatively simple car with a single cat that doesn't meet US or Euro emissions standards, so any computer chicanery is happening due to what's going on at the MAP and not the O2 sensor... especially since we weren't running it in closed-loop on the dyno (all WOT runs).

Yes, the STFT and possibly LTFT (if this car actually runs LTFT adjustment) will wander, and yes, that needs to be taken into account when designing an intake, but this was a short and simple test to see if it was worth the while to try to develop the part. (in other words, would it be simple or too involved for something that at most a dozen customers would buy?)

-----

*Pipe routing... Honda claims that they gained 10 hp midrange on the MMC 06 Fit/Aria by reversing the rotation of one radiator fan so it blew cool air onto the intake pipes... seriously...

More concretely, I actually lost 10 peak hp on the dyno on my personal car when we tested a different WAI configuration (shorter tube)... 10 hp that we couldn't get back no matter how we retuned the ECU... which showed that said pipe length really wasn't optimal... which supports the observation that me and some others have that a big part of why CAIs make power isn't to do with intake air temperature, but induction tube resonance and/or flow.... which is why I went with a WAI instead of a CAI in the first place, despite my build being for power rather than economy.

funny
 

You may want to have your smallpox vaccination reversed,go on an all sugar diet,skip the hand washing,and enjoy pond water rather than anything a municipal water supply has to offer.1,000,000 volt electrical power? Why not?
These are all related to 'Funny' analysis which apparently holds no interest for you.
Let us know when you hit 200 mpg with your chrome muffler bearings.

My only responsibility here (and I use that term loosely) is report something that I think might be increasing my mpg...not to argue endlessly as to how many angels fit on the head of a pin.

It's unfortunate that all the sophistry might keep someone from testing this for themselves. No sweat off my mpg if no one tries it though.

$26 gets you started.....need to check OD of intake tube and fitment of the filter.

Buy Spectre Universal High Flow Air Filter 8136 at Advance Auto Parts

So is the air intake on my diesel.
Yet it's still good enough to provide mixtures with plenty of excess air, as diesels do.

So you have no problem with making unsubstantiated and possibly wildly inflated claims of fuel economy. You'd be perfect for selling fuel magnets.

Althought Fuel magnets actually work !

(i'll get my coat)

oh please..........:eek:

do not BS me lad - because i see it
 

"EDIT: We didn't attach an OBD reader to the car... but there was little need and no time to do a comprehensive test... it's a relatively simple car with a single cat that doesn't meet US or Euro emissions standards, so any computer chicanery is happening due to what's going on at the MAP and not the O2 sensor... especially since we weren't running it in closed-loop on the dyno (all WOT runs).
"

very pretty
but you have not attributed any values to any of the pretty little lines on your graphs which may or may not be related to the blarney you are posting -

so
you follow the
if you can not dazzle them with brilliance , baffle them with BS .

the alleged test mule is not in "closed loop" and meets no EOBD or OBD2 standards as such - how do you suppose this has anything at all to do with what you imply ?
it does not .
try again
no more BS

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5106/5...247f3521_b.jpg
you do not need a dyno in fact for real cars driven on the street
dynos do not and cannot reflect real conditions - like this - see calculated load
if you do something / anything to improve this exact system on this exact car - the calculated load value will increase when driven under the same conditions shown in this screen cap

you claim x% at wot
- your claim would be reflected or disproved by calculated load
show me

I try to be nice...

I don't know what you think I am saying, but what I am saying is that these are power gains and losses shown on a car at full throttle under load on a Dynapack dyno.

Under load means it is pushing against the brakes of the dyno, which measure the force exerted against them.

That the car is at WOT and not in closed loop is important because somebody said the computer would readjust itself in milliseconds. Which is both true and not true.

Some computers adjust right away (again... turbodiesel, cone filter... no gain)... some don't. Those that don't adjust can still adjust if the AFRs at the O2 sensor wander far enough to cause the computer to adjust... but that won't happen at WOT, it will happen in closed-loop at part throttle. Which we were not testing... And it takes time for LTFT to wander. Also, taking OBD readings off the stock narrowband is nowhere near as accurate as using a wideband. Yes, there are issues with using a wideband shoved up the tailpipe as opposed to plugged into the exhaust manifold (my exhaust, for example, throws off tailpipe readings), but it will still be more sensitive than the stock narrowband O2.

-

A dyno is not real world conditions... I absolutely agree. But a dyno is a repeatable, stable test wherein you can control load, speed, temperature (if you've got enough fans) and other variables. You still can't control for humidity given our settings, and SAE correction factors are often inadequate when testing out modern cars that actually adjust themselves for ambient temperature and air pressure (see the brouhaha over the R35 Nissan GT-R dyno-tests when it first came out, non-SAE corrected, it often made the same HP in various conditions on similar dynos... apply SAE corrections, you got wildly different outputs... because the GT-R ECU alters boost levels based on atmospheric conditions, as can be seen by the boost traces on those dynos).

There are no headwinds or tailwinds on the dyno. Throttle position and how aggressively you start your "sweep" are still an issue, but you can control that by doing braked point tests instead of a sweep. There is no tire slippage on a Dynapack, no effects of tire pressure or rolling resistance.

It's just a simple measure of how much torque an engine can transfer through the driveaxles into the brake. There is some argument as to how accurate each dyno is, as they all read differently, and endless arguments over best gear-ratios to use when dyno-ing (should get as close as possible to 1:1, but that's not always possible), but here, we're only interested in the difference caused by the part being tested.

If all cars responded to all air intakes in the same way, and if all aftermarket air intakes were bogus, companies wouldn't be spending thousands of dollars researching new intakes and trying to find ways to make more "bogus" power with them.

As for values:

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/4107/tempdz.jpg
The steady blue line trace is stock power and torque measured on the brake via a sweep test at full throttle. No SAE correction or Torque Correction Factor applied. (TCF is bull, anyway... since it's an assumed, operator entered number).

Ratio and roadspeed are operator entered and not accurate. Again... this was done as a "before and after" preliminary test to see if it was worth building an intake for the car, so we weren't concerned with actual road speed or gear ratios, just the before and after traces for power. The incorrect gear ratio doesn't mess up the torque-to-hp calculations, since the dyno reads rpm off the ECU and does those calculations internally. Besides... again... we were only interested in before and after traces.

The three sweep lines with the irregular peaks are with the intake.. and show obvious gains at low rpm and high rpm, with an obvious dip in the middle.

Again, not shown are where we bolted the stock box back on and did a few sweeps. The gains and losses in each area were exactly halfway between stock and modified. The operator didn't think to save those traces at the time.

Would it have been instructive to attach an OBD reader to see this phenomenon happen on the road? Of course. Was it my job to do so and did I have time to do so? No.

I'm honestly baffled by what your issue is. All I've said previously is that intake modifications nowadays are voodoo simply because the computers seem to either adapt to them or not according to their own whim, and that this particular car gained power in some places and lost power in others, seemingly due to some weird intervention by the computer. And that I've seen some MAP-equipped cars that could dial back power completely from an air-filter change... Could it be very specific resonance tuning involving the intake resonator? Maybe. Would more testing tell us for sure? Probably.

I don't see how this, in any way, is bull. I'm not selling any snake oil here, just sharing what I've seen. Intakes are weird. They sometimes work and sometimes don't, and not always for the reasons you think they will or won't. And that's all there is to it.

-

Perhaps your issue is where I said a fuel economy change was believable with a MAF-equipped car (which the car in the dyno doesn't have). I say that because MAF-equipped cars are sensitive to turbulence or tubing or positioning changing the senor readings, and what we've noticed is that air filter position can play a role in gaining or losing power. some guys have even resorted to putting small mesh filters in front of the MAF to smooth out the air at the sensor... and in testing, the shop will sometimes try out multiple MAF positions to find out what works best.

While I say this is believable, I am not a believer in changing out your air filter to increase fuel economy. It could just as easily make it worse. Or not do anything at all except give you less filtration than stock for no increase in power or economy. And if there is an increase in economy, it may eventually get lost if the ECU readjusts. It would be much better to retune the car simply so that the usually overly rich fuel tables in the ECU are dialed back to more realistic levels.

-

Oh... and... please be nice.

affect
 

It would be very helpful for someone to install pressure taps along the entire inlet tract,feeding a bank of Magnehelics or manometers,and photograph a pressure histogram under real road load conditions for which to compare before and after.

* 3 tank avg of 37.35 mpg concludes an A-B test of a cone filter for a 6.7% mpg gain from last summer's ~35 mpg avg. :thumbup:

notes:

1) warm air intake was not an issue....since intake air was already being drawn from under the hood with previous setup

2) warmer ambient temps not a factor due to not using AC and driving usually in temps under 85 F.

3) it's possible that I was trying a little harder with the driving techniques

4) with the last refill...the gallons used was close to right on...so the need to readjust gallons used DOWN as seen with previous 2 refills was not seen this time

Basic science? ...try something to see if it works....THEN try to explain it? Don't try to explain it before you try it?

While you (?) can still argue about it for whatever reasons...understand that I'm still seeing a 6.7% mpg gain. So there....:D

1. That is NOT an a-b test. please.
2. Since you have no idea what a basic a-b test involves, then your result is not believeable.

If you want to post that your log showed a different result from last summer....fine.
But don't think you can call that an a-b test. That really calls to mind......bs.

The ENTIRE point of a-b-a testing is to control the variances as much as possible by doing the test here comes.........

[U]SAME TIME OF DAY

SAME CONDITIONS

HELLO!!!!!U]

Without knowing what temperature air was being sucked into the engine, this conclusion cannot be supported.

The effects of air temperature cannot be modeled as a switch. That is, one cannot state that below a given temperature (say, 85 F), air temperature will behave one way, and will behave another way when the air temperature goes above that given temperature.

This gain might have been caused by warm air being sucked into the intake. This gain might have been caused by removing a restrictive stock intake housing. This gain might have been caused by more attentive driving. This gain might have been caused by a combination of all 3 factors. Or this gain might have been caused by something else entirely. But we will never know for certain, due to the shoddy nature of the performed testing.

Huh?

Is this the same as a correction factor applied to the odometer reading, to get a more accurate measure of miles travelled?

Blindly do something without understanding the underlying principles? Conduct tests while leaving so many variables open that the test results are meaningless?

This does not help the cause of ecomodding. One might as well do the same thing with fuel magnets.

t vargo,
thank you for taking the time to debunk each item calmy..........:o