Truck Trend claims 10% more MPG with K&N in 2009 Ford F-150 after bogus road test
 

http://image.trucktrend.com/f/featur...ford-f-150.jpg
(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!

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...

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

The dyno doesn't account for wind resistance and other real-world conditions, but will give a baseline that one can calculate from.

Then again, I believe some of the newer chassis dynos have settings to account for wind and other variables.

Good point.

But even if the dyno didn't have an aero compensation feature built in, they could have run multiple tests at the same "road" speed and gauged results at varing loads (to simulate steady state driving on a grade and/or with wind resistance).

That data would still be vastly, vastly better than what they did.

You know the bulk of the content for these rags is just "infomercials" in print. :mad:

Well, the dyno would have been perfect to measure intake pressure drop at various loads. Which is the only thing that an intake can do, change intake restriction. There's no way an intake will return a 10% mileage increase, especially at part load where the reduction in vacuum from the new intake is minimized. Total lack of journalistic rigor. It's an article written by "By The Author"...whatever...

It's just a whole load of nonsense the sheeple will gobble and disseminate as gospel...

I keep going back to see if anyone has commented yet on their "rigor" mortis, but no one has.

Must... resist.. urge.. to.. comment...

Just do it. Nicely. Someone needs to tell these 'noids that not everyone is going to buy into the load of BS they're trying to sell. Seriously.

Here it is:

LMAO

Good one, Frank.

I'm somewhat surprised the comment is still there today.

OH - and it has been joined by another.

Well, I just put a K&N in my '88 Toyota - not in hopes of increasing mpg, but because I don't like throwing away stuff. I've been getting close to 28.5 mpg over the last several tanks, so we'll see what it does now.

I did see a bit of an improvement when I put one in the Insight, but I couldn't say whether it was real or just warmer weather or something.

I don't throw stuff either. Maybe it's my clean livin', but paper filters last at least 80,000 miles here.

Probably could still be running the factory filter on the '94 F150 but I changed it at 80k out of pure guilt.

I use a T-shirt. :) It's washable, and doesn't require oiling.

BTW - where does that oil go when you wash your K&N? Fram has a washable filter that doesn't require oil, and costs around the same as a K&N.

Let's not complain too much. When these cowboys spend a few hundred bucks to save gas, they often lighten up on their foot to "prove" it works.

I just wonder who they're trying to convince, Bob. I just wonder...

It gets curiouser and curiouser...
 

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r...cher/alice.jpg

So I'm still sniffing around this thing...

It makes no sense at all to make dyno runs without all the inputs i.e. fuel, air, etc. hooked up...

It was done after morning break but before lunch so they probably spent all morning prepping (or B.S.ing and eating donuts- yeah, I know what goes on in engineering departments)...

The SuperFlow dyno they use has the inputs for fuel consumption...

They must have that data; after all the "article" is about fe???...

They do show air/fuel ratio (green bar at lower left corner)...

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r...ata-Screen.jpg

...but that was likely measured at the O2 sensor.

I think they opted not to provide it because then their whole scam piece would fall apart.

THEN this other red flag jumps out at me (I'm kinda like a bull that way)...

LOOK at their dyno chart:

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r...o-chartwtf.jpg

I added the four straight lines, to illustrate something weird...

See where their text claims 291.8 ft/lb peak?

My line shows it's probably 281.8 ft/lb!

That also drags HP down to about 249... hella bunch less impressive than 260.8 ain't it. (HP line does appear to just cross the 250 mark but definitely doesn't make it, much less cross, the 260 mark.) :mad:

Just found more nonsense numbers not a paragraph away from each other:

and

Well, my math says 260.8 - 241.4 = 19.4

Hey, 19.4 isn't 16.

Actually MY figures are 249 - 241.4 = 7.6 (got 249 from the HP formula using rpm and torque values)

Oooooh... +3%!

They weren't off by much eh? :rolleyes:

Think that, judging from the rest of it, there isn't at least a 3% margin of error here?

Fudge a few percent here, fudge a few percent there, pretty soon you have a +10% claim that the casual reader/chart lookiter will never see.

Who am I going to yell at... "By the author"?

Yeah, I wouldn't put my name on that P.O.S. either.

The whole purpose for the made-up "road test" was to provide cover for the damning dyno results.

How can a guy make an alert for magazine fraud like this go viral?

*FRAUD*FRAUD*FRAUD*FRAUD*FRAUD*FRAUD*FRAUD*FRAUD*F RAUD*

Man I just can't let it go.

I go to the K&N site and find:

Hmmm. If I was K&N and these really were my values...

and of course I got to see a copy of the "article" before publication...

I would have to make plenty of "corrections"...

No?

I'm getting jerked off by more than just K&N. But they are on the counters at part shops and magazine covers. Every boy racer starts with a K&N style pod.

I remember when flames painted down the side, fluffy dice and sheepskins were more important than metal plates on the pedals or a 'carbon' shifter knob.

K&N
 

Isn't free speech wonderful! Just wait 'til you use K&N toothepaste!

Maybe so, but that's "up North", not northern Nevada. I imagine it's just a little dustier around here even at the best of times :-) And this truck seldom gets driven except when one end of the drive is on fairly rough dirt.

Smokers beware, K&N is coming for your cigarette filters, too! Recent studies suggest a 10% increase in nicotine consumption per cigarette, while reducing tar and other contaminants wholly by 25%!

They're making a healthier cigarette!!! (Don't mind the oil you're sucking in, it's OK for you and the environment... )

/sarcasm

Man, I love false advertising.

cigarettes
 

Ah yes,smoke with those puppies and K&N will guarantee 10% added to your lifetime!

To be fair, it's not K&N making the claims about improved fuel economy. They say:

But they weasel their way out of that conundrum by relying on and emphasizing their customers' unscientific testimonials.

All due respect, it won't be K&N making those claims, either. It'll be RJR Tobacco, Inc. :turtle:

A bunch of us were on a dive boat down in the Bahamas for a week and there was a copy of a that months Scuba Diving Magazine sitting on on the table.

"Let me make it clear there is a "Scuba Diving Magazine" and I'm not sure since this was over twenty years ago if it was THIS magazine. It was magazine that was about scuba diving."

We got talking about one of the dive operations that was featured in that months issue. One of the guys running the trip popped up and said that dive operation paid between $15-$25K for that article. He said they had been approached a few times for a feature article and it always came with a pretty hefty price tag. I understand with the Ski magazines this is standard operation procedures with almost every article in the magazine.

I'd bet K&N paid a pretty large advertising fee for that featured piece on their air filter.

Due to having the most blogs, I'm thinking Mr. Williams or Ms. Spiering to be senior editors and thus the point men for yelling at.

And Bob, I now think you were way too kind. It wasn't ignorance and/or sloppiness that caused them to not use the dyno; it was malicious intent to deceive.

The next sentence is:
I guess that pertains to trucks only, not other products they "test".

Whether you're critiquing a scientific paper or a Truck Trend article, there's a right way to criticize: act as though you're addressing a room full of people that includes the author. Be civilized, and large accusations require lots of supporting evidence (which you have).

I wish more people would write letters to the editor, letters to the manufacturer, etc. T.T. would be a little more hesitant to run infomercials like this one if they knew some of us are diligent enough to catch them.

Sometimes my supply of nice runs low.

The moral of the story is don't trust the garbage in the enthusiast magazines...

Except Kevin Cameron's material, mostly found in old Cycle World magazines. That guy rules. :thumbup:

The moral of the story especially is don't even waste your time reading a piece "By The Author" or whatever obviously bogus nom de plume.

Wouldn't it be more like Nom de'Computer?

I don't know... is truck trend a printed rag too?

I used to get all that junk but cancelled it years ago after finally getting fed up with stuff like breathless accounts of how awesome the newest BMW is because the windshield is tilted back 1 degree more vs. last year's newly obsoleted junk, and **** like that.

Yeah, it is printed. It shouldn't be, but it is.

I stopped getting rags when I started noticing more ads than anything else, and the only "reader's ride" that were ever featured were the ones that used all the products the rag featured the month before...

I guess I'm a little puzzled about some of this. So maybe that magazine article did not use a decent test design (I didn't read it, so can't really comment) but why would you expect that sort of magazine to do so? After all, they're hardly a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

As for the claims about K&N improving mpg and/or performance, have any of you actually done the testing you're talking about, or are you just spouting your own opinions?

I think all of maybe 1 person in this thread claimed either of those... that I read, anyway.

It all comes down to filtration and flow. This study proved that K&N flows better. Yes, by a huge 2 inches of water at 350 CFM. That sure is good enough for a 10% in fuel economy. It also does not filter very well.

NO air filter at all has even better flow and even worse filtering (and costs less than K&N), but will it increase FE by as much as 10%? Maybe if you add to it LRR tires and an alternator kill switch, then maybe so. That reminds me of an advert spoof in MAD magazine:
Play-C-Bow health pills - When taken with a glass of water they help hydrate your body. They help increase muscle mass when taken before or after intense weight lifting training. Etc.

The best way to increase flow through a filter, without increasing the amoung of dirt that makes it through, is to increase the filter's area. Just adding a second OEM filter and intakes, parallel to the original, would give better flow (and cost about the same) than most super aftermarket stuff. But how much will it help? I thought about doing just this, but after talking to a few car mechanics it turned out that I'd spend time and/or money on something that wouldn't make a noticeable difference, especially at the rpm range I stay in.

Darin did some of his own testing on various filters: Testing a 'performance' air filter for MPG - Part 1 - MetroMPG.com

It makes me mad when I think about it
 

Does ecomodder forums get hijacked by loyalists of K&N or Amsoil?:eek:

At times I thought that spies from organisations such as these make contributions to many different auto forums. Usually spouting claims that make these products look good, and influencing others with authoritarian dialogue. Its cheap covert advertising!! Maybe they are just ordinary people who repeat these bogus claims. But, if it is effective cheap advertising....you would expect some corruption.......

Like the article in question. A glorified infomercial

What about all those poor people who buy pods for economy.....usually good intentioned, hard working souls. Lied to by society and its champions of industry once again.:rolleyes:

But as far as getting screwed in the a** by an air filter company goes, its only a wee one in comparison to stuff like people who bought leaky homes, and perpetually sick people who trust their health provider(at a large financial, personal and mortality cost), when they should go elsewhere.....

What I've read is that while K&N's pass more volume at a specified pressure, they also pass more and larger particulates. Well, my engine ain't gettin' any younger, and making it inhale the grit that passes for air around here isn't going to improve matters. So, paper filters get the nod. They've gotten the job done all this time. They're a buttload cheaper, too.

Now, "we take our testing seriously around here" would imply that, if you're going to take the trouble to hook the silly truck up to the dyno, you might as well engage all the bells and whistles the dyno has, yeah? So seeing the Power gauge and Torque gauge on the dyno readout didn't impress me any. They both read 0.

I do these magazines the right way - at the library. At one time they were pretty fun, but anymore the mags are entirely too biased toward manufacturers. Whoever has brought out the most recent product is going to place either first or second in whatever comparison. If a next-level ringer is brought in, usually they'll let the newest product win and count coup against the ringer.

It's all just dumb.

I read Jalopnik a lot. Some Winding Road. And then I just wander around and drooooool on eBay Motors.

"Snowmobile of the Year" is a meaningless and quite obvious exercise in stupidity. They rotate it among the Big 4, just like clockwork. It matters not who actually has the most innovation that year. The rags don't want to make their bread-and-butter ad revenue generators angry.

Same with all the other products and mags too.