SLVSTNG09

Nice post!! Very well put.

replica

Do we have a dyno of a stock, then tuned, then tune and intake 3 valve? I'm not doubting your logic, and I had the same thought. Without numbers however, it's simply speculation.

howarmat

its not speculation...go do some research, dynos sheets are posted on sct, predator, C&L and various other manufactures sites

dkersten

The problem is, usually the only people who really have the opportunity to dyno every little change before and after are the manufacturers or performance shops who are trying to sell their equipment. None of them are going to show results that definitively prove that a product they sell doesn't give a noticeable improvement with all other things being equal. This is why you see advertisements for CAI/Intake combos with advertised increases in performance, but seldom see reliable results of standalone products. No reseller or manufacturer is going to advertise something that screams "my product isn't worth it."

So you turn to performance shops who have nothing to gain or lose from testing something, and take it all with a grain of salt. A good example is Kenne Bell's website. This is a company who has spent tons of time to test individual products in a controlled environment with a precisely calibrated dyno, just to see if the product would show increases in conjunction with their own superchargers. They have tested all sorts of configurations of intakes and exhaust under varying conditions and circumstances, and come to some interesting conclusions. Unfortunately, as a company who sells FI, they don't do much research on bolt on performance mods, but if you look long enough, you can start to sort the hype from the real data.

Another place to look is here on the forums.. If you search a bit you can come up with the occasional example of someone who changes from one CAI to another, and only modifies the tune to account for the MAF housings. I have seen posts where people dyno before and after on cams, intake manifolds, LT headers, shorty headers, mufflers, UDPs, CMDPs, and all sorts of different combinations of those items. After a while, you start to get a feel for what is giving the power, and what isn't. All it takes is research.. I would love it if I had the time and money to start with a stock s197, baseline it, then tune it, get a new baseline, and then start swapping parts, dyno testing after each one, and then trying different combinations, all while not changing the key power factors in the tune: AF ratio and spark advance. As long as those two factors remain the same from test to test, the power gains and losses you see are a result of the product you changed, not the tune. There is a science to finding accurate results, and you have to discount anyone who is not following that science.

STANGmole

You mean like they did with the Bullitt and 2010 GTs...adding 15hp?

I believe that the tune accounts for most of the hp gains but the CAI on 2005-2009s is more restrictive than on other Mustangs, isn't it?