Has anyone ever tried plumbing their AC into their intake?

I am sure someone else will know a better answer to this, but I would think that A/C as it exists on a factory car would use as much or more horsepower from the running off of the serpentine belt to run as it would make more hp by cooling the intake temp and increasing density of the air. A intercooler or hood scoop would be more effective I would think.

On tuners I am also not an expert, but you have to have a tuner for each vehicle you own. With a tune loaded on your vehicle you will not be able to put a tune from that tuner on another vehicle. People usually go with CAI along with tuners' but I believe they still see good gains with only tuners and get rid of the throttle lag. I am sure you could knock a couple tenths off of your quarter with a 93 octane tune pretty easily if not more even if you didn't change anything else. From what i gather on these boards if you flash back to stock tune before you take it in for service there is really not a whole lot that they can do about it. I am not going to try to paraphrase all of the threads about that though. Try searching for it.

The thing about a tune (even on a stock car) is that you will see a increase in power and throttle response as it will over-write the OEM Air/Fuel tables and a few other things. One of the biggest reasons that people get a tune, is they eliminate the throttle lag that Ford programed into the car for less "enthusiastic" drivers.

Well worth it IMO (and I didn't even order my car yet!)

Also, you can search up many threads about CAI, Muffler choices, etc for most of the basic upgrades.

Edit: Nevermind..

Doesn't really work... any power you add is lost from running the A/C compressor.

However, if you want some ideas, look into old MotorTrends or Car and Drivers from about 03-04. The 04 F-150 Lightning concept had a special cooler setup where you could store cold air and use it for a quick burst of HP. Interesting concept that never made it into production.

gambi06 said:

Well, I get it about the AC compressor causing HP loss under normal circumstances, however, I've read that the compressor on the Mustang automatically disengages at WOT, so that wouldn't be the case here. The air output for the short time you'd be at WOT should still be cold enough w/o the compressor charging to make a difference I would think.

About the tuners....why can't they tune several cars at once? don't they essentially just hold a computer file that uploads onto your car's ECM?

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running your ac into your car is useless. get nitrous if you are trying to play that game.

tuners only work on one car so the company can actually make a profit. if they tuned countless cars, then they would only sell 10 of them.

Perhaps this may provide an answer ? Another reason is.. tuner's lock themselves to only one particular vehicle at a time.. In other words, you cannot leave a custom tune file in your vehicle and then turn around and flash a custom tune file into say your buddy's car while your tuner still has your car's factory ECM files stored within it's memory, which is why you must re-flash back to stock first..Anyway, hope this helps out somewhat...

Also arent tuners serialized to a specfic cars pmc ??

I doubt that the A/C can flow enough air to feed the engine. So you'll have a double loss, 1 from the power drain the A/C has on the engine and 2 from restricting air into the engine.

Don't forget that most cars (& I'd imagine the Mustang too) shuts off the A/C at WOT so you'd have to hard wire the A/C on.

bat24 said:

Also arent tuners serialized to a specfic cars pmc ??

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I believe what your referring to is the tuner locking itself to a specific vehicle's PCM ?, so in that respect the answer is YES..However, you can also reflash more than one vehicle but you can only reflash one vehicle at a time and as I mentioned earlier, you must also reflash back to stock before flashing another vehicle..

With an HP Tuner you can tune multiple cars with the same tuner. They are not locked to a particlar vehicle. Does have to be the same year of which they give you two years to choose. Unfortunately they are not making any for Ford yet. They keep saying it's coming. http://www.hptuners.com/

gambi06 said:

With all due respect, if I wanted to play the nitrous game (again), I'd get nitrous. It's hardly the same thing! I was asking the question about AC to see if anyone has explored that option to see what, if any performance gains they've achieved.

As far as the tuners go: again, I am asking the why's to find out just that. Why?
Of course the companies want to profit from their product. However, in case you haven't noticed in the day of Limewire, Napster, etc., people are ALWAYS looking for ways to "try it before you buy it" so to speak. Therefore, I am SURE someone has learned how to hack their tuner to be "multi-car friendly".

-gambi06

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I guess play the A/C game since it seems much more reasonable than the NO2 game . I am pretty sure that if A/C could increase HP someone would have done it by know and put it online. I am not as SURE as you are about the tuners being hacked into, but even if someone did I seriously doubt they would post on here and tell you how to do it. SCT relies on the revenue from selling one unit per vehicle, so it makes sense that they would go to great lengths to make it difficult if not impossible to 'hack' them. I believe that once they were hacked if possible you would not be able to load new tunes into them and it would be alot of extra work. From searching for hacking the SCT and diablo predator I can find nothing very useful and the below quote seems to sum alot of the info I saw. The try it before you buy it is watching people run 13.2 with drag radials, a tune, and CAI, or looking at dynojet results. I guess if you are sure someone has spent the time, or the person that designed the things isn't bound by contract and enough money to not give it away for practically free then yeah someone has figured it out.
\
""Ok, here are your answers-I have been writing code, among various other things for 13 years on the Fords, and here is what I know to be fact. Diablo predators are still making global changes with their device, and not very much positive results come from them. They use those particular numbers, as referenced to their parameters, but the programs for those vehicles do not actually use those breakpoints, and they are also not the same on each one-while there are POSSIBLE gains to be had from them, a good deal of the specs they tell you are inaccurate, and are used mainly for flash in advertising, as I call it. Since you guys are on this site, I figure you all to be against BS and for meat and potatoes types of things, in getting to the facts.

As for the subject of descrambling or deciphering their deal on the standard red chips or predators, they use some sort of european, cold war-type scramble process, and flipping addresses and such do not work there. Or, at least, to put it to you guys, in relative terms, it's craploads faster, and cheaper to start your own from scratch, than reverse engineer it. This from many years of experience in this realm -it ain't worth your time.

For practicality, cost, and being able to access things like someone like me does, you are only looking at a 700-800 dollar investment to tune your vehicle to the degree you are looking for-I'm not telling you this to sell you anything, but I'm telling you, because it's the most cost/time effective solution for you guys, unless you have an EXTREME amount of time to waste, and by the time you get anywhere, we will all have been into CAN for several years. As I said before, I do not profit from it, hate BxllShxt, and know you guys can prolly handle it, so if you need more details about it, let me know."""

The only thing it would help is if its hot out...your going to have the A/C on anyways....so if you plumb 1 hose vent into the intake, then it would help a bit durring cruize and part throttle and most likely help milage.
But if your trying to go fast, then do something else...there are plenty of mods that do wonders on these cars.

Summary...if you dont mind loosing a vent, or atleast some blowing speed, then it wouldnt hurt IF YOUR GOING TO HAVE THE A/C ON ANYWAYS. Instead of all the cold air going into the car, some of it goes into the motor and improves effeciency some. If you have too much time on your hands and are itching to do something different, then go for it...I personally wouldnt waste the time with it.

I'm surprised more has't been said about the set up used on the lightning. I don't know much about it or why it never made it to production, but if I recall, it was said to give you a 30 hp boost when used.