Throttle Body Spacer: Is it worth it?

I did the Deckplate mod. on my 04 3.4 and it was super easy. Plus if you want to go out where water might enter the air box you can screw the lid back onto the hole you cut into the housing. It's just like an air intake but costs $20 and you can open or close the air flow depending on where you're taking your truck. I am very happy with it. I put a K&N filter on it and I even took it to get smogged and had no problems other than the smog tech had no idea what he was looking at! 231,000 miles and still going strong. I changed the MAF to since I was cleaning it and noticed a broken element on it. I bought a OEM Denso MAF off of Amazon for $65 vs. O'reilly's or Autozone who wanted $125 for the same part

 

I have yet to see any dyno or scanguage tests that prove any performance increases from these shiny, expensive engine jewels.

Want to know the best way to increase the power and throttle response in your truck? Keep the air filter changed once a year. Change your spark plugs. Dump some fuel injector cleaner in every oil change and use Top Tier gas. In other words, keep your engine maintained perfectly so that no performance potential is lost due to neglect. Rather than spending $300 on a piece of plastic that is a "cold air intake" when you basically already have a cold air intake by the sheer design of the ones on the Tacoma, instead try to make sure the engine is running in tip top condition before you try to make up what ground you could gain power-wise with a simple tune-up.

 

If these gains are so obvious show us a before and after dyno sheet saying that a Throttle body spacer is doing anything other than putting your money into someone else's pocket

 

The one result you can be assured of is redistribution of wealth.

P.T. Barnum

 

Stock intake is as "cold air intake" as it gets and most of the so called CAIs are actually the complete opposite of a "cold air" intake. As to the Tb spacer, there actually is some science behind it as far as changing runner lengths in the intake manifold to change the power band, example- going from a low rise manifold to a high rise on a 4bbl carb v8 can move the power band up in rpm a bit, but as I believe was mentioned earlier this is more noticeable on carb. Vehicles over efi. However the minimal difference the spacer makes plus the already really long runners on the Toyota intake manifolds really make it pointless and have little to know effect.