Throttle plate mod+Granatelli MAF+Volant CAI+JY Ram Air

General technical discussion and troubleshooting
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Topic author
slim724
I get chills without my van.
Posts: 83
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2009 6:42 am
Location: San Jose, CA

Throttle plate mod+Granatelli MAF+Volant CAI+JY Ram Air

Post by slim724 »

I had foot surgery, been off work, can finally get around better, and I've been extremely bored so I decided to try and make it all work, since I've had all the parts sittin in my garage taking up space for approximately 2yrs. I started a while back with removing the throttle plate air diffuser detailed in this post here:

http://www.astrosafari.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=6241

I also tried to install the Volant CAI and Granatelli MAF a while back but they would never play nice together, it would always throw a CEL, frustrated I uninstalled both and ran stock except for the throttle plate mod until today.

I installed the Volant CAI, no issues there, just a tight fit. I then proceeded to clean and inspect the Granatelli MAF and to my surprise I noticed that one half of the plastic housing on the MAF was slightly warped and it did not meet properly in the middle and created a slight air gap, so I transferred the new MAF unit into the original aluminum MAF housing with honeycomb mesh intact and it sealed up nice and tight. A quick startup and no more CEL!

I have many rubber elbows and miscellanious plastic pieces from air intakes that I've collected over the years from junkyard runs in the hope that I would use them fashion some sort of ram air effect on some of the vehicles I own.

I took an unknown rubber intake elbow and shoved it in the drivers side headlight bucket hole right in front of the battery for the fresh air, I then used another unknown rubber intake piece that had odd angular bends and a large oblong opening on the other end. I fastened them together and they fit like a champ, nice and secure and the end fit right to the area of the air filter element, closing the hood should make the flow a little more direct on to the air filter.

Preliminary, theoretical, imaginary, unscientific first impressions: it just feels peppier through whole rpm range, especially passing at highway speeds, seems to shift quicker through gears without effort, sounds slighly different, idle is a tad smoother. I don't think there is really any significant HP gains but it does feel noticeably nicer than with just the throttle plate mod, It may just be my subconcious working telling me that the shiny new parts have to make a difference, either way I like the way it feels, it's probably just dumping more fuel to go with the more air, who knows? I'll have to report later on any MPG gain/loss.

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1999 Astro 7-Passenger Van
Federal Government Fleet Vehicle
Cadet Blue 4.3L V6
Rear A/C & Heat
RWD G80 posi with 3.42 gears
40,000 miles
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