TBB Experiment

[FormulaForce]

I live in South Florida where heat is big factor. You can feel the horsepower loss driving here in the Summer when the engine is sucking in that hot air, even with a cold-air intake. I don't have lot of money for mods on my 95 Formula, so I'm always looking for cheap ways to get power. I haven't done the throttle body coolant bypass yet. I ordered a remote digital thermometer to test the difference in temps before and after the bypass. It may not be much, but it's easy to do. Anyway, I'll post the results so that we all have some real numbers to work with. I'd like to get the probe into the airflow itself to see the difference, but that may not be possible. The throttle body temp may not be much of a factor anyway since the air goes through it so fast, but there's no arguing that colder air means more power. In the old days, guys would put bags of ice on their intake manifolds before a race. If the bypass does make a difference, I might take it a step further using another guys suggestion: by routing fresh air from the front of the car through the coolant holes on the throttle body (kind of a mini ram-air setup) providing even more possible cooling. (Hey don't laugh) The two fake "air intakes" on the lower half of my front bumper are actually open in the back where someone had fog lights installed. I took out the lights and there are oval-shaped holes about 2 X 3 inches there. I'll just glue a black funnel inside there connected to 5/8 inch hose and run it back to the throttle body. Nobody will see a thing. If nothing else, I'll still have a new meat thermometer. I hope I can get the engine down into the medium-rare range.

[poormillionaire2]

Get a 160* t-stat and reprogram the fans to turn on at a lower temp, or get a manual fan switch.

I got a 160* thermo w/o the reprogram, and my engine temp never hit over 185*.