Pretty coo1!
I'm new here and hesitate to start in such a way, but at the risk of being labeled a "Negative Nelly" after my first post.... is there any proof these mods actually increase airflow? The reason I ask goes back many years to my days as a Land Rover tech.
Late '80s and early '90s EFI Range Rovers had a "trumpet" on the end of of the air cleaner, similar to the part that was replaced in these examples. It necked down to a diameter many people were sure was restrictive, so they lobbed off the trumpet thinking it helped airflow.
I thought it would too, but then I took a bunch of air filters to the late, great Earl Davis for flowbench tests back when he was running the test lab at K&N. I had both a standard Range Rover filter with the trumpet and one modified similar to the way this Ford one is done. No significant difference in airflow. In fact, the trumpet actually flowed slightly more. Earl postulated that the trumpet design actually had something to do with that, smoothing and consolidating air flow, much like velocity tubes will do on carbs. I later backed that airflow test up with a dyno test.. no difference in power the chassis dyno could pick up (admittedly, chassis dynos are "numb" to small changes). Operationally, you couldn't tell a difference, except that the modified horn was noisier.
I won't say definitively that the Ford mod will flow more, or less, than the stock setup because I haven't tested it, but previous experience leads me to ask the question at least.
I have limited access to a flow bench, so in theory, I could test the various permutations of this filter. I have a stock filter from my '05 5.4 F-150 (I am running an AEM CAI). If we wanted to do a test, I could probably make that happen. Bill can vouch for me. I hope!!?
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Wed, February 11th, 2009, 12:48 PM
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