I read some where that someone asked about the Tornado. Something to keep in mind about these things. When these things first came out many years ago, cars had carburetors. carbs use squirters for initial fuel delivery which is then taken over by the primary and secondary jets. These squiters and jets introduce raw fuel into the incoming air flow. The claim to fame for these "Tornado's" is they create a swirling effect through the air horn of the carb snatching up the raw fuel and atomizing it onto a super fine mist, this fine mist would then enter the intake manifold and be distributed into the intake runners and on to the cylinders which also helped to keep raw fuel from puddling in the botton of the intake plenium as well as being sucked into the cylinders and exiting as raw unburned fuel. This was supposed to make it a more efficient A/F mixture for better combustion. With that in mind, it probably did have some benefit (at least in theory). There were many different design's of these things back then with a miriad of names, I think the "Tornado" is just the current name used.

However, with modern cars all having fuel injection, these "Tornados" will do nothing more than create an obstruction in the intake air pathway. The fuel injectors already do a supurb job of turning the fuel into a super fine mist and any swirling of the intake air will be nullified inside the intake manifold. Basically it's old technology that has no place on modern cars, it has since just become "Snake oil".

Over the last 3 - 4 years or so, several folks that belong to another forum I'm a member of have experimented with these things. Almost all of these people seen a loss of power on the dyno, I would say 90%, while the remaining 10% got no change at all.

Just sharing some real life background on these things that I've picked up in my 40+ years of engine building and tuning..

 

So my belief that they are a scam is correct. I always figured that they would restrict air flow rather than helping.

 

Actually Dan, the tornados are not supposed to aid in fuel swirling at all - they are designed to create a vortex in the air intake hose, which allows air to travle through the intake tract at a higher speed. In theory it works (a vortex passes media at a higher speed - as is evidenced by water flowing down a sink), but in actual operation...well, that's something else.

My problem is that the HHR's intake flow chart looks like this:

Outside Air Intake Hose > Airbox > Panel Filter > Truncated Side of Airbox > MAFS > 90-degree Intake Elbow > Throttle Body > Intake Runners

If the "Tornado" or whatever is located at the end of the outside air hose, any increased flow benefit would be diffused once it hits the panel filter. There are still several airflow changes that take place after the filter where the airbox changes dimensions before entering the throttle body also.

I would be interested to hear a report after driving it and comparing both ways. It would be good to get back-to-back mileage figures for the same road trip with/without one too.

I'm just as skeptical as you, but CJ is reporting he notices some increased pickup with one after changing to the IMCO Turbo muffler. (He has since run comparisons with it in/out also.)

Jury still out over here...

 

But wouldn't anything you put in the air intake system that reduces inside diameter restrict air flow whether it produces a magic swirling tornado or not?