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Automotive Air Filter Test

See which automotive air filter performs best at stopping dirt from entering your engine.

Speed by Spectre Air FIlter Rating

Spectre Performance Air Filters are rated by flow capacity or CFM (Cubic Feet Per Minute). The CFM allows you to compare how a filter will affect ...

True Flow Filter Comparison Video

This video shows a comparison of the True Flow Foam Filter to commonly used paper or cotton gauze filters. The test clearly shows how much greater ...

2011 Ford Super Duty gets all-new 6.7-liter diesel V8..If you can’t do something right (powerstroke) then do it yourself ‘Henry Ford’

Ford’s issues with its long-time heavy duty diesel engine supplier Navistar will soon be coming to an end. The 2011 edition of the Ford Super Duty pickup will get an all-new diesel V8 designed in-house code-named Scorpion. So now, if Ford has any durability issues with its big diesels, it will have no one to blame but itself.

Officially the Scorpion retains the Power Stroke badge, but that and eight cylinders in a V-configuration are all that is carried over. The Scorpion engine picks up a variety of technologies that have been appearing on other recent engines, both gas- and diesel-fueled, as well as adding a few new tricks, particularly the turbocharger. The biggest change for the architecture is the move to an inside-out layout. Since the early days of the V-engine configuration, most examples have had the intake system mounted in the valley between the banks with the exhaust on the outside. Like BMW’s new turbocharged gas V8 and GM’s current on-the-shelf Duramax 4500, the Scorpion switches this around. Read on after the jump to learn more. lots

A turbocharger uses the engine’s exhaust gases to spin up a turbine that in turn drives a compressor to push more air into the engine, thus making more power. The beauty of the system is that it consumes very little energy under light load conditions and allows smaller engine displacements with equal power to larger ones for improved efficiency most of the time. When extra power is needed, the turbo helps expand the engine’s operating range on-demand. Therein lies the rub, the on-demand part.

Turbos of course are not immune to physics and most people have heard of turbo-lag. That’s the time delta between when the driver pushes the accelerator and all that “on-demand” power actually becomes available. There are two main causes of lag. One is the time it takes for the exhaust gases to actually get from the cylinder to the turbocharger and apply pressure to the turbine. Over the years, engine designers have attempted to address this by moving the turbo physically closer to the exhaust ports. This is problematic on a V engine with two sets of exhaust ports so the exhaust has to be plumbed around the engine to the turbo. One solution is to mount two turbos, one on each cylinder bank with very short exhaust manifolds. This however, adds cost, weight and complexity.

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