I hear what your saying... mfgr's will almost always say their product will improve mileage to get extra sales. I think their claims may be based on a completely stock vehicle with their mod and only their mod. when I bought my 2000 ram, it was getting about 12~12.5 mpg, I added one piece at a time for a while and mpg never really went up much... 12.8~13.0, far less than what was claimed. I even went as far as running the same routes to work & back (different route each way) to make sure my mileage #'s were fairly accurate. monitored how I accelerated, what speeds I traveled at etc... the bottom line was all I saw was a boost in hp/tq at different rpms.

I found that the bottom line with mpg #'s was low end torque. the more you had the better the mpg #'s. Even now with my CTD its the same thing. loose bottom end, loose mpg.

 

40 bucks and 2 mpg's for me and my D is heavier than your dak. Only another 40 bucks for a k&n drop in filter and I'm sure at least another 1 mpg out of it. http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...up002_0001.jpg
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what is it we're looking at? is it a cold air source to the stock air box?

 

Yep I thought you've seen it already. I got a much better throttle response out of it and more horsies. I love it for the price only takes an hour to do and that's because you have to wait for the silicone to set. There are a few other guys that did it cheaper than mine I think with $10 in materials I just didn't feel like running back and forth all day long and I had already checked what Auto Zone had and Home Depot. Ended up going with 3" flexible hose an MAF sensor braket to cover the air box and black silicone.

 

cool, you ended up with 2 mpg bump? and if I read it right you expect another bump after the K&N install?

I've been toying with the idea for my AFE intake on the CTD... the 2 vent/fog light holes would be routed up to the air filter area, ideally pressurising it some to keep the heat from the eng comp back. My shield gets heat soaked which sucks. I plan on doing an insulating job (thermo-tech) on the shield to keep the heat back, then plumb in a stream of cooler air from one or both of the vents on the front bumper.

I did something similar to that on my bmw 325is... it worked really good. the only problem with that was the inlet hose was too small but it did give a noticeable boost in the midrange. for that I fabbed up a makeshift scope or funnel if you will to force air into the hose, it collected it and fed it right to the filter.

 

Yeah I need to get a wider mouth on that also. The only thing they had at AZ was a chrome one though and I just don't want it noticeable which it is not at the present time. I don't want it too ghetto so I have shyed away from the idea of chopping up a funnel. I think the k&n drop in filter would help it breath that much better. You should definitely take that route with the tubing from the foglight holes you propably wouldn't even need to put any insulation on the heat shield either with it.

 

i'd still do the insulation on the heat shield... 2 reasons 1st being that at stop lights or stop & go traffic the area will get heat soaked, 2nd is I'm greedy... if I got the same results that I did with my 325 & m3, i'd be hella happy. free HP/TQ if you ask me. I have an outlet tube coming from the innercooler that may be getting heat soaked and heating back up the intake charge. i'm going to wrap that and try it out.

One other mod you guys might be interested in is wrapping your fuel rails. On the 5.2/5.9 motors the fuel rails get heat soaked and warm up the fuel before it gets injected... if it's not heated up, it'll keep your intake charge slightly cooler which will help out slightly. doesnt seem like much but the more you cool the fuel the better the results. there is a thread over in the 2nd gen ram forum going on right now on the fuel cooler issues. might be worth a look.

I did the fuel cooler on 2 bmw's and the ram and every time it payed off... the ram gave me 6% better mileage, and I have mileage data to back it up. the coolers on the bmw's gave me less pinging, more low & midrange power.

the downside to them is the potential fire hazard if your in an accident as the cooler was mounted under the front bumper behind the front grill (on the bmw's) and up high near the top of the radiator on the truck. I will most likely wrap my CTD fuel rails at some point, I think the rails are getting heat soaked but I'm not sure how it's affecting performance as the fuel goes to a high pressure pump which will most likely heat it up more. so at this point it's a trial & error thing.

 

Geez there's so many things that can be done to a car depending on what you want... I LOVE IT!!!

 

oh yeah, another thing... there is a formula out there, (cant remember exactly what it is) that says for every X drop in intake charge temp will get you 1% gain in HP/TQ... I think it's 10 deg F but i'm not 100% sure anymore.

245 hp * 1.03 (example) = 252.35... like I said, doesnt sound like much but it starts to add up. My butt dyno could easily tell on the BMW's that there was a noticeable gain. I insulated my intake shield, intake tube and added extra airflow to the air filter... helped alot.