The idea that this airbox is supposed to have some function above freezing temps was new to me. On the next-to-last day of Winter here, it was 81 degrees when I opened the airbox and found the flap midway positioned such that if there were indeed such a thing as wind chill without evaporation, this one would have closed off the cold air intake as soon as the "chilled" 81-degree air started streaming in the little funnel.

So, with this thread in recent memory, I pulled the airbox thermostat and went to the shelf for a new one. While digging out the new part, I checked the log for this car and found I had done this March 16, 2010.

Somehow I cannot justify replacing this thermostat the equivalent of four times as often as changing the air filter, even if there is some correlation to fuel economy I can't seem to perceive. Above freezing, I still believe the warmed-up motor uses cold air quite efficiently, especially with the Bosch AMM which does measure mass and knows the air temperature.

On the whole I am not into thinking I can better engineer every system that fails in these cars, and more likely to pursue the understanding behind the original design than to modify it. Two instances I can think of where time seems to have convinced me otherwise are this airbox thermostat (longevity obviously) and the terminals on the afterthought Temp Faker board in the instrument cluster.








--
Art Benstein near Baltimore

Marriage is a relationship in which one person is always right, and the other is a husband.