Originally posted by MyBlackZX3:
I just received and intake sensor modification from e-bay. This is a modification to your Intake Air Temperature sensor that will let your engine breath cooler air and increase the amount of fuel that enters your engine. The increased air/fuel ratio that you recieve will bump up your horsepower significantly over stock cars with a resistor chip. Not only will you feel better acceleration and torque you will feel this through the entire RPM band.
Same Function as ECU Upgrades and Performance Chips Like the Jet V-Chip!
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Simply put, this is a load of bull, and you got taken.
It will mildly modify TIMING (not a/f ratio), but nothing that will net you anything of worth. I had a mod similar to this on my escort.
It does not let your car breathe cooler air. The air it brings in is the same temperature, it just thinks it's colder. And like I said, it doesn't help by adding any more fuel at all. It is effective over the entire RPM band, but take your car to a dyno and with or without this IAT Sensor modification, you won't see any measurable differences.
It definitely doesn't offer the same function as a chip, either. The chip actually advances timing the the point where you need to run high octane fuel. It modifies shift points on the automatic transmissions, and alters the fuel maps (in some cases, a chip does increase the a/f ratio). It can also force the PCM to ignore or be more lenient with values provided by certain sensors, and can tweak the operating parameters of the PCM, including providing odometer/speedometer correction when using a different final drive ratio, increasing the top speed and RPM limiters, de-activate the EGR, etc) The little resistor-on-a-stick that you bought was a nice way for some eBay snake oil salesman to get rid of $0.30 worth of merchandise for $10, and it won't ever live up to the claims you posted.
I'm not saying that it does **nothing** for the car's performance, but it does very little, and the claims made (that you probably cut and pasted out of the auction) are bogus. Simply a lie.