A friend of mine told me that i would loose air flow if i put a open element on my car even tho i have a cowl hood. he says its becuz wit the stock one it forces air into the tbi. now i thought that wit a open element i could suck the could air in the hood. basically what im askin here is has anyone noticed a a difference in performance goin to the open element from the stock one
oh i have a 92 rs with a 305 tbi

 

My car is all stock except for the after market air cleaner i put on there and i would say its the best $20 i ever spent. it made a bit of a difference in throttle response and when you floor it the engine sounds ten times better.also my gas mileage increased a tiny bit but this is all just what i noticed. you may not notice anything. you can always do it and if you don't like it just go back to stock but i would defiantly say its worth it. Just my opinion though.

 

tbi air cleaner = crap

open element= best 30$ ever spent it can grab air all around and is not restricted to grabing through a tiny hose.

 

Please use capital letters so we can read the post ONE time. And there's an "h" in the word "with". Sorry. It's getting harder all the time to read many people's posts, not just this one. I've just never spoken up about it before.

 

Best bet is cold air. Unless your cowl intake is sealed such that you only get air from it, air will just blow OUT of the cowl, and the intake will not pull any air from outside. Then, anytime you have open vents you get fumes from the engine compartment into the passenger compartment.

I pulled the cowl piece from my stock bird hood. When this is done, you do lower the underhood temp a bit, but do not get a cold air intake. I ended up putting it back on when I moved out of AZ since the rain started causing other problems.

Where in KC are you. I'm out in south KC, 435/state line.

 

i have a modified tbi air cleaner, i took out the thermac device, the wall when the air goes through the tube, and i cut the bottom out bigger and run a hypertech powercharger, i have a 4 inch cowl hood and then i put the bigger truck filter and a chrome k&n flow through lid on top and it sits up into the cowl hood, when i did that i noticed a big increase. i do still have the OEM air cleaner duct on it though also. I believe i read that the stock air cleaner housing and tube only provide negouh air to feed like 4 cylinder to 4500 rpm.
the more airflow the more HP your car wil make plain and simple.