Well, I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one; no hard feelings, I like sharp discourse.
I also like K&N filters.I have used them on all my motorcycles since 1979.I haven;t been using them on my latest cars because of the oil air sensor problem, but aia suspect maybe K&N has solved that with the factory oiling(careful-not too much).
Dinky little 70-80 hp motors in our 3000 lb cars just aren't worth bolt on intake and exhaust mods.If you get a 15% increase in power(a really great gain from bolt ons), you get 10 hp on a 3000 lb car!!!
Luck,Charlie
PS Ford has used the AC to cool intake air in one of its Hot Rod trucks. If you could drop the temp 50 degrees, you can increase the power 10% everywhere-just not up top. Obviously,the ac wouldn't be able to do this very long, kinda complicated also. Part of N2O "goodness" is that it cools the intake charge a bit.In WW2 the Germans were injecting N20, WATER and ethanol or methanol for extra zip at altitude in supercharged planes for short spurts!

 

Sorry Zimbop,

I seperated the comment about being intelligent into a seperate paragraph so that you would know I'm talking about a different subject, in this case, not you. Thats what you do when writing a book and different people start speaking (ever notice how many paragraphs there are in a book ?????) or when you're writing an essay and you start speaking about a different topic. Obviously you, and many others, didn't pick up on that. I didn't call you an idiot, nor say you poked fun at the guy. The person I was referring to was the person who told him to put a Ferrari V12 motor in his car.

 

ElanC,

You say its boring, and cheap shot filled, yet you take the time to read through all the posts and post about how its boring and cheap shot filled....hhhhmmmm....sounds much like your argument against me....not that I have anything against your right to express it though....

 

(.........angry Headmaster strides into classroom....)


Right! Hands up the boy who wrote that idiot stuff about a Ferrari!

P. p .please Sir it was me, or should that be - it was I?

Tulip! Ah I might have guessed as much you are a fool! What are you?

A fool Sir.

Was it supposed to be funny?

Yes Sir it was meant to be ironic.

How would you define irony boy?

W.well Sir. The use of words, often humorous, to express something other than and especially opposite to the literal meaning.

Ah Tulip I see you are not such a fool as I thought. You are excused the half-term essay which I am going to set the other boys.

Oh thank you Sir.

 

That was the 2005 (IIRC) Ford Lightning Concept Truck. 5.4L roots supercharged modular V8. You are referring to the super cooler which could use the AC system to chill the air inlet temperatures which would allow for a greater increase in timing which results in more power. I believe it last for short 30-40 second runs. Neat idea.

I still have not seen many people mull over the idea of a more powerful electric motor, other than needing larger battery packs to sustain the output of the motor, what else could be a drawback?

 

Jjanney, so Ford never actually produced it?Too bad, that really was a better idea!! Their hot rod trucks were the coolest stuff they ever produced.
I agree that the "Bigger electric motor" more battery storage is the way to go. The problem is that you would have to stuff a more power motor in the same sized pk as the current motor. I don't know enough about electric motors to know how you increase the power while keeping the size the same. My guess is that the current hybrid motors are probably very high powered already-so it might be tough to hot rod them.
Now pickups-they look perfect for hybridizing. With that long driveshaft and all the room underneath, you ought to be able to put pulleys/sprockets on the shaft, and extract and imput power fairly easily. I though about getting about 10-20 junkyard 1400 watt alternators(off late model SUVs to be that big) and lining them up on either side of the driveshaft driven by belts or chains-would need tensioners etc. When you back off the gas the alternators would automatically engage(fancy clutches somewhere) and pump power to a battery. Farther down the DS you could hook one or two HH motors-more or less like the alternators. Flip a switch and they engage!
Well,"my idea" would be waaay beyond me, and the alternators could weigh 200-300 lbs by thenselves.Normal batteries would add another 300-400 lbs.Oh well,guess I'll leave it to Toyota.Luck,Charlie

 

When we discuss mods I think we're refering to things a tinkerer, even an expert tinkerer, could do in their garage. A more powerful motor is certainly something Honda would have to design build and install, along with the larger battery capacity and IMA adaptation.

It seems to me that Honda carefully optimized the electric motor and battery capacity for the most common driving conditions. I could certainly benefit from a larger motor and battery capacity with my frequent hill climbing, but that's not typical.

Comparing the Prius and the HCH, where the Prius gets about 1 MPG more (from the GH database), it seems to me that there's very little to gain in FE from an electric motor/battery mod. I would say that Toyota went overboard with their design, for no real gain. True, they got the bragging rights for a pure EV propulsion at slow speeds, but they gained no FE from doing that because the electric energy used for pure EV has to be regenerated by the ICE. The Prius is a much better candidate to become a plug-in hybrid, as some people have already been proving. The HCH has no chance of becoming a PHEV in its current configuration. But Toyota vehemently denies any plans for a Prius PHEV. That's a pity because I would buy it in a second.

Converting a hybrid to a PHEV is the greatest mod I can think of. Alas, not in the HCH.

 

I have heard of somebody modifying their HCH with a turbo.... and increased both power and FE. Maybe google will have a link to this.

 

livvie,

Do you have a link or remember where you read it ???? I'd like to see that and take a look at the data. According to most everyone else around here, if you install something for performance, it can't POSSIBLY increase your fuel economy....

So I must have been crazy or lying or not able to calculate fuel economy using simple arithmetic despite being a computer engineering major when I took a stock chevelle with a 383 stroker in it that got 11 miles to the gallon then added a K&N Air Flow Filter, an Edelbrock RPM Air Gap intake manifold, a 700 Holley Street Avenger carb, and an MSD 6A ignition box and upgraded my points distributor with an HED one (stock GM one) and got 15 miles to the gallon if I could manage to keep my foot off the floor. Or maybe I should have just forgot about the car and gotten something faster right out of the gate....

Tulip, forgive me then. With people talking about drafting trucks and FAS'ing all over the place (the most dangerous thing you can do while driving that I can think of) or sweating their heads off because they don't want to turn on the A/C just to squeeze some mileage out of your car or have bragging rights or whatever, its hard to tell sarcasm from a general statement. Most things I mentioned above would fall under sarcasm to me, go figure....on a side note, I remember someone in high school did put a Porsche motor in a bug, and it got like 20 miles to the gallons or something. But it also ran like 13's in a quarter mile. Pretty good for a car that is NOWHERE near aerodynamically shaped.

 

meviken-with older cars that were carbed and had points or even primitive electronic ignitions, you could literally get a free lunch-better power and better FE.
Heck,you probably had headers instead of cast iron exhaust manifolds-that was worth 75 lbs.Same story with the intake manifold-an aluminum intake might have saved 40-50 lbs over the stock cast iron.Losing that much weight might have been worth 1/2 mpg by itself.
Now a good properly jetted street carb could make a huge mpg difference-2 mpg city easy!
Old style points ignitions degraded immediately.You had to replace points,condenser,plugs etc every 3000 miles-you might get 2 mpg difference between new and 3000 miles old-especially with leaded gas,but you are post leaded gas.
I can easily believe that you picked up 2-4 mpg with good hotrod components.If you had a manual trans, the stroker might help you run lower RPMS-save some gas there.You MSD-esp with multiple sparks-was a huge improvement over the points ignition-1-2 mpg easy.
Newer modern vehicles-EFI-O2 SENSORS-knock sensors-air mass sensors-electronic ignitions-drive by wire- stock with 10/1 compressions, very little or no valve overlap,variable valve timing,are really,really had to improve on in respect to mpg!!Frankly,I view then as impossible to "hotrod' to improved mpg.I think weight,narrower taller tires,aero improvements are much better bets to improve mpg than intake and exhaust mods.
I could be wrong about intake and exhaust mods and mpg at part throttle, but I've never read anything that has convinced me otherwise.
Now a really well designed turbo might be an exception, but I doubt it.The FE idea of a turbo is to use a smaller,lighter motor to "act like" a bigger motor by using the almost(costs 5%) free exhaust gas energy. Your motor size/wt is fixed-a turbo won't help reduce the size and wt, so it won't improve mpg.Now if, you could regear-so you were turning 1200 RPMS at 70 mph-you might save some friction, but you would need a much heavier flywheel to prevent lugging with a small 4 cyl at those RPMS.Luck,Charlie