oh boy some of you guys kill me with some of this logic[:'(] ...............here is the deal no matter what you do unless you increas the size of the holes in the tb you cannot flow more air[:@]. Hence you cannot use more fuel[>:]. A cai allows cool air to flow more easily than the stock intake[&:] which is also a cia. its all in the air filter here. easy to flow easy to breath. I replaced my dirty air filter on my stock intake got instant better mpg installed the new cai 3 days later when it came to my house and got a few more mpg.

 

What set up do you have?

 

do a search for $59 CAI I got it from ebay works great

 

I think your wrong. Think about it. if you have a staw and you suck through it no problem right. Now get a really long straw or make that straw smaller and it will be harder to suck in. Next suck in with no straw at all a lot easier. Your mouth never changed size it's all in the amount of air you have to move. I do agree with the air filter part. differnt air filters will let air go through easier. thats my 2 cents

 

no matter what you do the straw can only draw x amount of air. remove the straw you make a larger hole with your mouth.long or short straw you cannot flow any more air than can flow through an orfice the same size. it seems like you are getting more air because you do not need to work as hard to get the air but it is flowing the same amount. the added torque/hp on a free flowing system comes from the engine not working as hard to draw breath(if you will)
I should say that I have spent many hours on a flow bench when I built slant sixes most were injected I tried alot of diffrent cai things most didnt work any better than others the only way I could flow more air was to open the tb and the plenum runners the air flow was pretty much constant for the rpm reguardless of airfilter used(+/- %5) a nominal amount. remove the filter the flow would increase as would the rpm. put the filter back on rpms decreased as did air flow. leave the filter on and increase rpms to match the un filtered rpm and low and behold the air flow matched as well. This proved to me that the increased power only comes from the engines ability to breath easier.

 

CFM's are only part of the story. When you look at the engine, you will see wires going from the iat sensor to the pcm. One mightconclude that they are- there for a reason. One of the first thing that I remember learning 25 years ago when I first started screwing around with cars is that you bump the timing up you get power- you retard the timing you get fuel economy. One of the things the pcm determines from iat input is timing. Higher temperature readings from the iat sensor will make the pcm retard ignition timing.

Second thing it does is helps the pcm determine fuel delivery. Since there are more oxygenatoms in a cubic foot of cool air than there are in a cubic foot of hot air, high temperature readings from the iat sensor will make the pcm pull fuel. At cruising rpm, fuel delivery is mostly controlled by o2 sensor input. Less oxygen will also make the o2 sensorread rich and cause the pcm to pull fuel. Either way, hot air makes the pcm pull fuel.

Less fuel + retarded timing should = better fuel economy