Running a WAI through the wringer

[FrugalFloyd]

From an earlier post of mine:

Originally Posted by SentraSE-R

I looked it up in my repair manual, and the electrical doohickey atop the air intake hose near the air filter is the MAF, which contains both a heated platinum wire and a temperature sensing thermister. From reading the description, I am directly reading IAT from the internal thermister, and indirectly calculating mass air flow from the voltage applied to the heated wire and the thermister, rather than v.v.

[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.

[theholycow]

Hybrid mode on the SG means that it will run when the engine is not running but the key is on. That's how I get a decent reading when EOCing my VW. It still loses a few feet while the key is off.

[FrugalFloyd]

To allay all concerns:

My Scangauge is set to hybrid. You have to do that to P&G with EOC. It still loses miles during P&G. That doesn't affect the test accuracy, anyway, since I'm comparing ABA under the same conditions.

I doubt my WAI restricts air flow. The OEM horn widens into a 3" diameter bell where I connect the WAI tubing, but it quickly constricts down to ~1-1/2" heading toward the air filter (see earlier photos).

I'll try wrapping my WAI tubing in a blanket to see if better insulation will raise air intake temperatures.

Correlation coefficient(r) is a measure of fit. The closer r is to 1 or -1, and the more points plotted, the more likely it is that the ranges are related. The .94 correlation coefficient between ambient temperature and mpg shows a highly likely relationship. The .51 correlation coefficient between IAT and mpg shows no significant relationship. The closer to zero r is, the more random the distribution.

[Project84]

I agree with Beef. That big aluminum length of pipe you're using is just radiating all the absorbed heat. My aluminum pipe going into my airbox is roughly 14-16" total.

I don't remember who it was but someone on her (years ago, in a Saturn) was using insulation and the foil insulation tape all over the airbox and the intake tubing as well as the HAI tube and said he found 20*F by doing so.