"Ted" <the_busmaster@msn.com> wrote in message

What extra air?  The engine is only going to suck through the amount of air
it needs to run at a given rpm.  It may have less resistance and at high
engine speeds it may be able to grab a little more air, but for normal
driving it will still get all it needs to function and the computer will
give it the proper fuel ratio.  The stoichiometric fuel-air ratio is 14.7:1
of air to gasoline vapor for optimum combustion. The computer is controlling
the fuel injectors to get as close to that as possible and adjusts according
to feedback from sensors.

Cold air is more dense than hot air so it contains a tad more oxygen per
cubic foot.  At speed, I don't know how much difference in temperature there
really is.  A 70 mph gust of wind under the hood tends to move the heat away
quickly.  At low speed with the AC on and air passing over both the coils,
there is probably a greater difference

It will not allow any "extra air" to flow into the engine. If you do the
math on 99% of the engines out there you will discover that the factory
paper elements flow about 4 times the amount of air than the engine can
ever use. And they filter better than the K&N as well because they have
smaller passages through the filter media.
They have also caused failed sensors and SEL lights due to the oil on them.

Warmer air will always hurt performance and mileage. Colder air is
denser air. The denser the air charge is into the engine the more power
it can make on the same amount of fuel. The factory airbox also silences
a LOT of intake noise. If this wasn't the case why would 99% of racers
use ways to funnel cooler air to the filters and avoid underhood air.

Well, for 99% of your driving, even for aggressive driving, stock is fine.
While some air filters are 'higher flow', higher than what?  What's needed?
Or just higher than stock?  Think about it, with a modern FI engine, the
limiting factor is the throttle body valve.  Now, moving a source of
resistance
to the air out to the filter is not exactly the same thing, but it would
make
essentially no difference in performance from what you'd see except for
WOT.  (Wide Open Throttle)   And even there it would be VERY
marginal.  Remember, the computer is going to adjust everything to
where it should be all the time.

In most cases...

Turns out that with SOME vehicles there are some things you can do
about performance at WOT.  Dodge Intrepids, and similar, for one
thing, have a reputation (with the 3.5L motor) of being 'restricted'
at WOT due to the air box at the fender well.  (They are designed to
draw 'outside cool air', not hot/warm air from the engine compartment)
Anyway, they have a reputation of a noticeable power benefit from
modification to that area.  (And a lot more intake noise as well!  Seems
the air box was designed to limit intake noise.)  The air box mods
didn't seem to do much with the 3.3L motor setup.  And it didn't seem
to affect mileage, only WOT performance.  Later Intrepids didn't
seem to be affected the same way, or so the rumors go.

A lot of this is hype though, as back in the 60's there were a lot of
issues with intakes.  My brother, for example, took the top of the
air cleaner off on a Buick Skylark 350 V8.  In it's place he got a
'flat' disk that screwed down and exposed the air filter all around
instead of through the air duct.  In cold weather warm-ups were a
problem (it no longer took air over the exhaust manifold when cold
to assist in warm-up)  but other than that, it didn't seem to affect
normal driving.  Made an INCREDIBLE noise when you stomped
on it, and he claimed better ETs, but I never saw the numbers.
However, remember that this was before computers.

Bottom line?  Most of anything you do, unless it starts bumping
'limits', is just going to be compensated out by the vehicles computer.
That's not to say it's a bad thing, just that you probably won't
notice much difference.

As to changing from 'cold air' to engine compartment 'warm air',
I don't think that would generically be a good thing.  But again, I
don't think you'd see that much difference in normal driving.

Hmm, can you put a 'box' around the new filter and duct it to the
old cold air intake?