Your Tundra’s engine is generally described as one, big giant of an air pump. To produce more horsepower, huge amounts of air must circulate in your motor because the amount of fuel that initiates combustion is directly proportional to it. Various devices are available with the intention of aiding the engine in ‘breathing’, per se, and subsequently, make the most out of its performance. Cold air intakes, air filters, and superchargers are added left, right, and center just to achieve the edge that extra horsepower can bring.

There are plenty of products in the market that claim to improve the already significant amount of engineering placed on the motor. There are some products that really do work as advertised like performance air filter and cold air intakes. These work, too, because while they do increase the engine’s performance, they also increase other aspects. For instance with air flow, it trades an increase in the noise of the engine with an increase in power and expense.

Unfortunately, these usually simple enhancements sometimes claim excessive increases in horsepower and fuel mileage. We’ve tested a few cold air intakes and none of them matched the results printed on the box. Having said that, none of them disappointed us. However, one device that I have a hard time endorsing is known as a throttle body spacer.

Throttle body spacers like the PowerAid by Airaid are designed to be placed between the truck’s throttle body and its intake. This brand has claimed that it creates an intense vortex of air that will help to better atomize the fuel when the two becomes mixed. According to its manufacturers, the so-called vortex is accomplished using a series of grooves that is carved inside the device itself.

Unfortunately, there are some flaws behind the engineering in this device. From a common sense perspective, if it were really that easy to add significant amounts of horsepower or fuel mileage gains, then these spacers would be stock equipment from the factory. Automakers need every competitive edge they can get in today?s market (especially when it comes to fuel economy) and none of them are leaving anything on the table in that area. The idea that a ?vortex? could help the air and fuel mix together is not a bad one, but in the modern fuel injected engine, air and fuel are not mixed together until they both find themselves in the cylinder just prior to combustion.

A spacer like this might benefit the older throttle body injection and other forms of fuel injection in which fuel goes directly to the throttle body where it mixes with air prior to combustion in the cylinders. It might also help on carbureted engines. However, this type of spacer will absolutely have no effect on the more cutting-edge multi-point fuel injection system that Tundra uses. There is a very little chance that the vortex will even make it to the cylinder.

Here’s the bottom line; I don’t endorse the usage of a throttle body spacer on any truck with a modern fuel injected engine. It’s better to just save money and put it on something else that’s more effective. For instance, a K&N performance air filter costs only half the price, but it will, for sure, improve the engine’s performance and fuel economy a great deal.