New TB spacer with Tornado built in!!

Was browsing ebay for a part and came across this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Jeep...017QQitemZ270194702551QQrdZ1QQsspagenameZWDVW

There is also a review here:
http://offroad-review.com/new/index.php?page=41

Anybody try these? any inputs?

waste of money

XJRunner said:

waste of money

Click to expand...

Thanks!!

save your money. a updated intake manifold will help

if you get any gains from this, it will be because of the TBS, not the fins. i just instaleld one i made from go-jeep's plans (HERE). jury's still out on if it helped me at all.

The fins on this one look like they could loosen up and all turn flat, blocking airflow.....

Anybody else notice that?

Just ask yourself how does the air remain spinning after it gets split into 6 different streams inside the intake manifold and that is after it has gone splat against the intake floor directly under the throttle body and then turned 90*!

I dont think that it helps with air flow. I think that what its actually meant to do is help atomize the fuel to air mixture. This in theory may work great for carbs and TBI but not so much with the FI system that we have. No I didn't think this up on my own. I read it somewhere. The article Dyno tested and then did a Fuel mileage comparison on different styles of Fuel delivery and Intake designs. On the Carb and TBI models it did help a little, but enough to offset the cost of the item was a little sketchy.

IMHO it will not gain you enough to warrant the extra cash if it does work.

Cody

If that thing comes apart where do you think that material its made of is gonna go? I would bet that it could not be helpful to your valves, pistons and cylinder walls.

I have a TBS and its a waste of money, yes I fell for the spacer theory as well. Glad it only cost me $25.

i have never understood the purpose of a throttle body spacer on a fuel injected vehicle.it does nothing.so what you have moved the throttle body up some.what does this do?

if it were a carb i would completely understand since you are giving that much more space for the air and fuel to atomize before going down each intake plenum to the valves.

the throttle body in a fuel injected car does not release any gas so why put a spacer on it.i understand boring out the throttle body and intake opening to allow for more air to enter both.

Intake systems, whether they are attached to a fuel delivery device- carburator/TBI or "just" an Throttle body are simular in design and function.

The rules don't change much because there is no fuel in the mixture.


Ron

you mind explaining that one?lets hear what you think a TBS does in a direct fuel injection motor.maybe it could help accelerate the air into the intake itself.thats about all i can see it doing.

as i pointed out i would understand what its doing in a carb or TBI setup since you are creating more length to the plenum which would increase the amount of time the air fuel mixture can mix.but i don't see how putting a spacer on just a throttle body does anything when the fuel is being mixed either right before it enters the cylinder or into the cylinder itself.

a throttle body is simple a flow valve.it either cuts the air off or lets more in.a carb is introducing fuel as well as acting as the flow valve.a tbi is essentially the same this as a carb but with injectors on top instead of jets in the venturi.

so please feel free to explain yourself Ron and the reasoning behind your statement

Wil Badger said:

you mind explaining that one?lets hear what you think a TBS does in a direct fuel injection motor.maybe it could help accelerate the air into the intake itself.thats about all i can see it doing.

as i pointed out i would understand what its doing in a carb or TBI setup since you are creating more length to the plenum which would increase the amount of time the air fuel mixture can mix.but i don't see how putting a spacer on just a throttle body does anything when the fuel is being mixed either right before it enters the cylinder or into the cylinder itself.

a throttle body is simple a flow valve.it either cuts the air off or lets more in.a carb is introducing fuel as well as acting as the flow valve.a tbi is essentially the same this as a carb but with injectors on top instead of jets in the venturi.

so please feel free to explain yourself Ron and the reasoning behind your statement

Click to expand...

IIRC, increasing the plenum size does not increase the runner velocity, but instead decreases it. This can be benificial in some cases, and in others, not so much. Depending on the number of cylinders and the manifold design, one cylinder may steal the charge from another cylinder. Adding a spacer increases the plenum size and decreases this tendency by evening out the pulses.

An even air "Charge" is just as important to a direct port engine as is a TBI or a carburator. The PCM has no idea what each cylinders air charge will be. It only knows what the total charge is and adjusts fuel delivery to all cylinders accordingly. As a result, some cylinders will be "fat" and some may become "lean".

I wouldn't be so quick to lump carburators and TBI EFI systems together.
The two methods of fuel delivery are miles different in operation. To compare Carburation to TB-EFI is to compare apples and oranges. They are both fruit, but the comparison ends there as far as I'm concerned.

Ron

that explains what you had on your mind a little better then your first statement.thank you.

I didn't take the time to read the responses but....
the way I look at the vortex created by a spacer or one of those tornado(yuk) things is this:
xj's have a dry type intake no benefit at all......on a wet type intake like on a carbed engine it might be slightly beneficial because it "could" help the air and fuel flow into the intake ports IE better atomization.

but that is just my 2 pennies......

I'm not an engine designer, nor am I an engineer whose expertise is fluid dynamics. But I will tell you what I know to be true based on my experience with my 16v.

In the 1980's Mercedes took their 2.3 cyl engine to Cosworth and had Cosworth design a cross-flow 16v head with the ultimate goal of Group B rally racing. To make a long story short, Audi came out with the Quattro at the same time and since MB's intended car was NOT 4wd they went road racing instead.

What resulted was the German Touring Car Campionships or Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (DTM). The final Evolution of Mercedes' 16v street car that was fielded was the 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II. In race trim in weighed around 1000kg (2200 lbs) and the 2.5L 16v 4-cylinder NATURALLY ASPIRATED engine put out in excess of 370 hp. Redline was somewhere north of 9,000 rpm.



I mention this because the race cars were equipped with individual throttle bodies (ITB) that used a guilllotine style valve (as opposed to the butterfly style in most production applications). This is a very popular intake system mod for owners of street going mercedes 16vs to undertake in an effort to gain more power.



The problem is that while ITBs sound great and generate great hp up top, the short intake runner length (typically not much more than 200mm) does nothing for low end torque.

The stock Mercedes 16v motor is fed by a Bosch KE Jetronic injection system. It's a multi-port, continuous fuel injections system that was popular on porsches and VWs as well. The block is canted to the passenger side by 15 degrees and the intake runners loop UP from the cylinder head and then back down to the intake plenum which is located almost 1/2 way down the engine block. The actual runner length is over 300mm (12"). The reason for such a long intake runner is to aid in daily drivability by generating more torque.


*** NOTE - The pictured intake manifold has been shortened from stock by 50mm. As you can see, they're still pretty long.

In case anyone missed that I'll re-state:

The engineers designed an intake manifold with a longer intake runner specifically for the purpose of increasing torque.

The point of all of this typing? A longer intake path can be, in the right circumstances, beneficial to power gains. I THINK, I'm not sure, but I THINK the reason why this concept worked for MB is because the runners are narrow as well, which, if I remember my fluid dynamics correctly actually helps to accelerate laminar airspeed towards the centre of the runner.

I'm not saying that the spacer WILL work on the 4.0 but there's a possibility that it could. And if it does work it probably has more to do with the increased intake path length than the "vortex effect".

wow.....

The reason a longer runner helps torque is it makes 'packing' the cylinder easier.

As engine rpm goes up, the velocity of the 'mass' of air in the intake also goes up. When the intake valve opens, this mass of air starts moving into the cylinder. When the intake valve shuts, it is stopped. common sense right ??

If the mass of air is moving very fast, it can actually pressurize the air in the cylinder above atmospheric pressure (albeit it very slightly). Think of it this way, when the red light goes red, the 1st car stops easily, but the cars at the back have to use increasingly more braking power to stop due to the drivers reaction times from the 1st to the last car (especially if they aren't paying attention). The same thing happens to the air flow in the cylinders. the air mass gets to moving into the cylinder as the valve opens and the piston is moving down. Then when thepiston hits BDC, the air is moving so fast it can't stop stop instantly, so it begins to pile up, or pressurize the cylinder very slightly until the valve shuts.

To be able to do this, you need a sufficicent volume of air in the intake, and using a throttle body spacer or carb spacer will give you this extra volume. Or a longer runner. This is why a tunnel ram (get it, the word ram describes this whole process) is so good on a high rpm engine. the faster the engine is spinning, the faster the air gets moving, but it still has to stop the same way @ BDC

Yes, a spacer can slow velocity due to the larger air volume, but it also provides the extra volume under the throttle blade to allow more air into each individual cylinder per stroke.

On such a small/tame engine, I don't know if a spacer would help or not...it's your decision

The down side is, the longer runner will actually hurt power on the top end, due to frictional losses in the airstream.

This is why the ford taurus xho had dual runners, long for low rpm torque and short for high rpm power.

I was doing some further thinking and what we're ultimately discussing here is an application of Bernoulli's Principle. If that sounds familiar to some of you it's because Bernoulli's principle is the sbasis of the science behind airfoils and what what makes a plane fly. Conversely it's also the principle that, when applied upside down, produces downforce on cars.

in rough terms, when you have a given volume of air passing through an orifice (or in this case, an intake runner) reducing the cross sectional area through which the air can pass will accelerate the airflow velocity. The key here is the cross sectional area.

Someone mentioned that increasing the volume would actually slow down airflow velocity. I understand what that person was getting at, however the statement was inaccurate.

Increasing the runner diameter will have the net effect of slowing down the airflow; sort of Bernoulli's in reverse. Increasing the volume of air passing through the system while maintaining a constant diameter would, by necessity, INCREASE airflow velocity ASSUMING that the intake was the bottleneck to begin with and that the engine was pumping air through at less than maximum capacity. And this is usually the case.