So, I’ve been thinking. The MAF sensor seems to be at the bottom of whether or not folks are seeing a big power increase with the CZ box. Cars that run lean to begin with, due to the MAF, don’t see much of a power increase when the CZ is added because they already are running pretty strong. This means that cars that are running rich will see the bigger boost in performance.

So, does this mean that a good way to predict your potential power increase before you buy a CZ unit (or e-manage or whatever) is gas mileage? A car that is getting good gas mileage is probably running leaner and one that is getting crappy mileage is probably running too rich, right? Sure, there are other factors involved, but unless someone is beating the hell out of their car, it’s pretty easy to tell which cars are on the good side of the mpg curve and which are sucking gas harder than Heidi Fleiss.

Has anyone correlated these two things? Right now, on a fairly green engine (1270 miles), my best tank was about 17 mpg and my worst was 13 mpg…and I haven’t been driving it all that hard. I’m hoping my Hummer-like mpg is an indicator that I’ve got more untapped power potential under the hood.

~ Matt