The Nissan Path

is there any point to a throttle body spacer like the aFe Power or airaid ones on amazon?

https://www.amazon.com/aFe-Power-Silver ... Pathfinder

i'm bone stock now, but I think my first mod will be the XTP intake manifold spacer at the same time when I swap out my original spark plugs. while looking at the IMS, i stumbled across this.

I don't plan on going all out with engine mods. at most after the IMS- an aFe CAI and Bully Dog tuner. Wondering where this throttle body spacer might fit within this mix, if at all.

From an engineering perspective, no...not much point. I agree with this article:

https://itstillruns.com/advantages-disa ... 85215.html

I have the manifold spacer on my Pathfinder and it definitely helped smooth throttle transients by adding volume to pull from. Basically my truck downshifts a lot less since there is no sudden drop in airflow. Any advantage the throttle body spacer gives you would be from the same volume increase...the ridges and whatnot are dumb and don't do anything meaningful other than make your intake sound like a whistle if you're into that sort fo thing.

I will reiterate what shipfixer sais.

In general if there was an easy solution of just tweaking geometries a bit for free power the OEMs (in this case Nissan) would have already found it.

For a while There was a plenumspacefer out for our VQ40s that seemed to help.
The company was called perdigon something.
But he had a bad run in parts he gave those away for free (or the cost of shipping) as novelty paperweights.. but then people sold those as the real thing and the buyers were irate that they wouldnt fit and it destroyed his rep and the business.
This was years ago ut somewhere there are still some "real" ones floating around... it will be just near impossible to tell the good ones from the bad ones prior to purchase.

The best things to do either once u changed something ( exhaust spacer whatever) is to do a uprev tune on a dyno. these cost real money ( 700 bucks a few years ago) but u get to keep the software and tuning adapter and they ae proven to work... and to make the best out of any mods u might have added.

PS Edited for clarity

palmerwmd wrote:The best things to do either once u changed something ( exhaust spacer whatever) is to do a uprev tune on a tune. these cost real money ( 700 bucks a few years ago) but u get to keep the software and tuning adapter and they ae proven to work... and to make the best out of any mods u might have added.

Real money indeed but might be more complexity and time than I am inclined to engage in currently. Maybe the simpler bully dog one day.

ShipFixer wrote:From an engineering perspective, no...not much point. I agree with this article:

https://itstillruns.com/advantages-disa ... 85215.html

I have the manifold spacer on my Pathfinder and it definitely helped smooth throttle transients by adding volume to pull from. Basically my truck downshifts a lot less since there is no sudden drop in airflow. Any advantage the throttle body spacer gives you would be from the same volume increase...the ridges and whatnot are dumb and don't do anything meaningful other than make your intake sound like a whistle if you're into that sort fo thing.

No whistle for me! Great article; thanks for posting that and your review of your IMS. The explanation of why the IMS works for our VQ so well may be explained by:

“Engine families typically come in multiple displacements, and it's not unusual for the largest engine in a given family to run 25 percent larger than the smallest. Manufacturers typically prefer to save a few dollars by using the same intake manifold for every engine in a family rather than to create several optimized versions for each bore and stroke combination. So, if you've got one of the larger-displacement engines in an engine family, you could have wound up with a plenum about 25 percent undersized for the application.â€

I guess we may have the same/similar size intake mainifold as the VQ37 and VQ35?

Throttle body spacers work on engines that have carbs or throttle body fuel injection, but are worthless on engines with multi-point or direct fuel injection. The XTP plenum spacer does increase power in the mid-range, but the best thing about it is that it makes replacing the #1 and #3 coil packs and spark plugs so much easier! I can actually get my fat hands under the plenum plus I no longer have to take apart the #1 coil pack to remove it with the plenum installed. The VQ40 plenum is different than the VQ35 and VQ37 engines.