I bet you have read
a hundred times or more
that a dirty air filter reduces MPG....
Recently both Hot Rod Magazine's technical guru Marlan Davis
in his 'Pitt Stop' advice column,
and now
Consumer Reports in actual real world tests
correctly state that on a modern EFI engine
dirty air filters don't affect MPG
unless they are super-severely plugged up:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/c...-406/index.htm
sample quote:
According to our tests, driving with a dirty air filter in modern engines doesn't have a significant impact on fuel economy, as it did with older engines. While fuel economy didn't change, however, power output did. Both cars accelerated much more slowly with a dirty air cleaner. We drove both vehicles with their air cleaners restricted and found little difference in gas mileage with either engine. That's because modern engines use computers to precisely control the air/fuel ratio, depending on the amount of air coming in through the filter. Reducing airflow, therefore, caused the engines to automatically reduce the amount of fuel being used.