I am doing experiments to investigate 3 things. How has this effected my truck's miles per gallon? The truck's miles per gallon sometimes increased by 2 miles per gallon, but 1 is more accurate to say as an average. What effect does it have on Horse Power at the wheels or wHP? Are the changes different in the city than on the freeway?
I installed this with the hope that the Shot Ram Intake or would increase my truck's miles per gallon. In the city, in the winter, I am now getting better miles per gallon for my truck, then when I was driving on the freeway before. That sounds completely counter-intuitive, right? Let me explain.
The first gas tank I ran my Torque App's miles per gallon versus hand calculated where you take how many miles you've driven since your last full tank of gas divided by how many gallons of gas it takes to fill up you gasoline tank all the way again. I used the same 87 octane from the same Shell gas station and same gas pump every time. I stopped filling up at one click for some tanks, but I had to switch to 3 as my gasoline tank' vent sometimes prevents a full fill up by as much as 6 gallons. I also use 2 oz. of TCW-3 oils per 5 gallons. I consistently did this prior to the one variable change of the intake as well so continuing this is a control to increase accuracy of the experiment. I'll have to address with a later article how TCW-3 oils have improved my truck's miles per gallon. It's similar to how Lucas Upper Cylinder lubricant helped me, as indicated by this link to a very popular video I made about it.
Prior to the Short Ram Air Intake, the truck got 14.3 miles per gallon with very little driving other than my commute to and from work. As traffic is usually the same and the way I went there was always the same, this helps reduce variable changes. Afterwards, the truck got 15.9 miles per gallon for the total commute. I got as high as 16.3 miles per gallon, but that was commutes when from the teens and 20's in degrees F to as high as 55 degrees F. My truck did get better miles per gallon as it gets warmer, and in fact the Short Ram air intake didn't actually improve for warmer weather gas mileage. It just matched it.
Please save this web page to your browsers favorites. I've only been running the Short Ram Air Intake for a couple of weeks. It's been cold and it's been like spring or fall instead of winter as well all in a short time. If I can get some more consistent weather, my truck's miles per gallon pay vary.
Now on to wHP or HP as measured at the wheels. I am using the Torque Pro App to follow OBD II data and test for how much power I have on a graph on Wide Open Throttle or WOT runs. I'm just working within the speed limit on the same on ramp onto the freeway. So far it appears that how much wHP wildly changes, but when you compare it up to the temperature at the intake air temperature sensor, or IAT for short, the colder the air the more wHP. The warmer? Less. Both intakes produce the same power. The weather determines wHP.
So far, all the Short Ram Intake has done is reduce my wHP like it's a warmer day when it isn't. On the freeway it is in fact running only a degree C or 2 hotter. In fact, it seems that on the freeway my miles per gallon has decreased. This tells me that as it's sucking air on the freeway behind the headlight it's getting colder air than what's available to the stock, fake cold air intake. What's nice however, is that the city miles per gallon has increased tremendously. This is when my IAT is showing much higher temperatures than I normally would in winter or unseasonably fall or spring like weather.
Source: Why a Short Ram Intake? The reason will surprise you. by DENichols
