Damn, that sucks about the car.
There wasn't much point in changing it. I had the stock air cleaner off to make some adjustments, the shiny new chrome air cleaner was sitting on the shelf nearby, and I like being able to get at things without always removing the big stock air cleaner. It's not that I dislike the stock air cleaner with the little heat valve, it's just I've never really understood why people make a big fuss about them.
Thanks. Some bonhead stole about a $1.50 in change, and got a friends backpack.
Cost us $260 to replace the window...Big ouchy with her on maternity leave.
Anyways, I replied on wednsday night, I copy and pasted a pretty good splanation on how it works....guess I forgot to hit the post button.
Funny last night on FB, Jake Wells sent me a message....he has been experiencing carb icing lately, and is another good reason to have a heat source available for the intake.
Here it be:
Heated air intake systems operate on the principle of increasing the temperature of the airױ, the fuel will more effectively stay in suspension in the air rather than falling out of suspension and forming droplets on the floor of the manifold. Warm air from the outside of an exhaust manifold is drawn up into the air cleaner to increase the air temperature as quickly as possible after the engine starts. The air cleaner assembly incorporates a thermostatic vacuum switch that responds to the air temperature after the air filter element and actuates a vacuum motor that moves the control flap to allow the air to be drawn from a cooler location such as the top of the engine bay or outside the engine bay. If the air becomes too cold, the thermostatic switch will automatically change back to drawing heated air from around the outside of the exhaust.
The system was often used with computerised carburettors or throttle body injection systems but is typically not used with multi-point fuel injection, as the problem of fuel falling out of suspension does not occur when the fuel injectors are located close to the inlet valves.
There are exceptions to this however. Some vehicles, such as the 1992 and 1993 Fox body Mustangs, do use such as a system even though they have multi-port fuel injection, presumably to help the air-fuel mixture burn at the proper rate in cold weather, as even though the fuel has finely atomized, it has not properly vaporized, and therefore flame propagation will be otherwise slower. These vehicles have a MAF sensor, Air Temperature sensor, and when equipped with the 2.3L 4-cylinder two spark-plugs per cylinder. This combination ensures the air is just warm enough to vaporise the droplets and does very noticeably improve performance and emissions at the same time in cold, northern winter weather.
