2TimingTom
Elite Explorer
- Joined
- October 12, 2010
- Messages
- 2,503
- Reaction score
- 110
- Location
- Littleton, CO
- City, State
- Littleton, Colorado
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- '97 XLT
On my Mazda Protege, I used everything from the stock intake to a CAI that had the filter sitting outside the engine bay in front of the front wheel and behind the fog light. I even had a header, high flow cat and cat-back exhaust on it. I even removed a set of butterflies that sit in the intake manifold just before the cylinder head.
I started with a 100% stock car and modified the crap out of it and then sold most of the parts and put what I could back to stock. In that entire time, I never noticed any difference in mpgs that I would attribute to the breathing mods being there or not being there. It was a daily driver and I'd say my driving habits remained pretty consistant throughout. I did notice better response and acceleration with the breathing mods all in place.
It seems that the small, 4 cylinder motors are hard to gain any power from via simple bolt ons. I think the engineers extracted nearly as much as possible at the factory. With larger 6 and 8 cylinder motors (my 4.0 in my Explorer is twice the displacement of my 2.0 Protege motor yet only 52% more power (134 vs 205)) it seems that breathing mods are more effective.
So like I said before in reply #8, don't get any kind of bolt on mod strictly for "mpg savings". Get it either for power or bling or both.
I started with a 100% stock car and modified the crap out of it and then sold most of the parts and put what I could back to stock. In that entire time, I never noticed any difference in mpgs that I would attribute to the breathing mods being there or not being there. It was a daily driver and I'd say my driving habits remained pretty consistant throughout. I did notice better response and acceleration with the breathing mods all in place.
It seems that the small, 4 cylinder motors are hard to gain any power from via simple bolt ons. I think the engineers extracted nearly as much as possible at the factory. With larger 6 and 8 cylinder motors (my 4.0 in my Explorer is twice the displacement of my 2.0 Protege motor yet only 52% more power (134 vs 205)) it seems that breathing mods are more effective.
So like I said before in reply #8, don't get any kind of bolt on mod strictly for "mpg savings". Get it either for power or bling or both.