Running a WAI through the wringer

[severach]

Higher temps may or may not help. In my 1998 Delta 3.8L V6 Delta 88 95*F was the perfect temperature, +- a few degrees depending on air density from water content. Higher temps produced knock without any mileage gain. After about 140*F the mileage went down one or two MPG.

OTOH my 1994 Grand Am 2.3L SOHC has less than 0.5 MPG change from 55*F to 110*F IAT though it runs more quietly. It's just harder to start at 110*F IAT.

V engines naturally warm intake air so the ECM must be designed to handle it. The inline engine of the Grand Am with its cooled intake and multi port injection never sees hot intake air so the ECM does not need to be programmed to manage for it. Hot air sends it out of design parameters.

[theholycow]

Originally Posted by severach

V engines naturally warm intake air so the ECM must be designed to handle it. The inline engine of the Grand Am with its cooled intake and multi port injection never sees hot intake air so the ECM does not need to be programmed to manage for it. Hot air sends it out of design parameters.

Another interesting and different idea.

[spotaneagle]

Originally Posted by SentraSE-R

First, photos. Then we'll discuss the testing.

My Scion's air filter box, IAT sensor (I presume), and intake piping.


This is where my air intake was, in front of the battery, behind the radiator. I
connected my WAI over the 3" diameter plastic pipe that looks like a little horn, and snaked it back over itself. I had to remove the battery to get the WAI tubing into this tight compartment spacing.

thats a maf or map sensor located after the filter near the throttle body, your scion might not have an IAT sensor, they are located before the air filter on saturns and are only two wires, and a little sensor that is virtually the same thing as a coolant temp sensor a little nipple and a two prong clip

[spotaneagle]

are you sure you were measuring your air temp? your ait sensor may be located in the sidewall of you engine compartment and just measure ambient tempurature... that is definately a maf sensor and not an ait sensor

[spotaneagle]

ok i didnt see that in the mess of cyber ascii and i made a mistake i didnt see beef posted that i thought it was some newb trying to confuse the forum

[FrugalFloyd]

I plugged the ambient and intake air temperatures into a spreadsheet and calculated correlation coefficients against mpg. Ambient air had a .94 correlation coefficient. Intake air had a .51 correlation coefficient.

[Project84]

Please translate so the general public knows what all that means.

I still don't see how you fail to get better intake temps than that. Your revised HAI looks much better and it still didn't get you anywhere close to what us Saturn guys shoot for. If you're saying you did see marginal gains, don't you think if you were up to the AIT that most of us aim for, you'd see even better results?

[GasSavers_BEEF]

just a little constructive criticism:

-it looks like the area that you took the air is very cramped and may have actually restricted the airflow somewhat.
-that is a long run of very thin pipe that may be losing a lot of heat going to the intake

overall, I can't say too much negative about your experiment as you performed it the way you said you would. I too would have liked the temp delta to be much higer but you do what you can when you can. regardless of the experiment, there will always be criticism.

one thing about the scangauge losing miles, can't you put it in hybrid mode? I don't EOC so I am passing on what I have heard in the past. I think this fixes this issue.

[Jay2TheRescue]

I have also heard that setting fuel type to hybrid also solves the problem of the SG shutting off while EOC'ing.

[bowtieguy]

Originally Posted by BEEF

...it looks like the area that you took the air is very cramped and may have actually restricted the airflow somewhat.
-that is a long run of very thin pipe that may be losing a lot of heat going to the intake

...regardless of the experiment, there will always be criticism.

keen observation and thought. i've suspected(not your exact hypothesis) this may be the case in WAI experiments that do not seem to yield mileage.

science, studies, and experiments can be as unique as each individual conducting them--they're not perfect and cannot always be explained.

in an ideal situation, several different and experienced POVs would be on site to better brainstorm and share ideas specific to each application. but, we do the best we can here, i suppose.