By now, surely everyone has seen the late night infomercials of towels that soak up endless amounts of water or the full body detox kits. Wow, there is a sucker born every minute. Or is there? In these desperate times, people will do whatever they can to squeeze a little more mileage from a tank of gas. In flipping through a magazine I saw a small advertisement for the Tornado Fuel saver insert. Upon further reading I saw that 1-2 MPG gains were common on several year ranges of vehicles and all you have to do is put this metal ring with angled fins into your air inlet tube and it “creates” a swirling vortex of air that is more efficient for the vehicles motor to accept. Surely not. Something that looks like a soda can wind chime cannot help me save gas.

I talked to one of our salesmen about it and he said that he has one on his Mach1 and that he saw an increase of 2 MPG. OK, maybe, if someone put a Tornado on their Camry it might make a difference, but not a Mustang, right? He had also said that he put on one his Sportrac and did not see any difference. Now I am confused. My wife drives a heavy 2007 Suburban LTZ with a 5.3L, bone stock. Sure it has E85 capability and can drop 4 cylinders on deceleration and some on the highway but we didn’t buy it for its mileage capabilities but for its kid carrying duty.  But when it costs two credit card transactions to fill it up these days, you are open to anything. Yes, I bought a gimmicky Tornado.  Maybe not the high point in my life but maybe I can try it, find out it doesn’t work, and sell it to some other poor sap. But what if it DOES work? I installed the Tornado in less than 5 minutes into the air inlet tube just past the air box. My wife had to make a 225 mile trip (round trip) and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try this thing out. If SHE can get good mileage, then anyone can.

She made the one way trip with 87 octane gas at 75 mph straight highway and knocked out 21 MPG! That is an increase of about 2-3 mpg!!! Could this be? Could it actually work? The return trip was lots of traffic, stop and go and hauling a table and chairs in the back and got 19.4 MPG on the way back! Again, more than I could have imagined. I am a believer. Will it work for everyone on every application? Don’t know, results may vary per application, but it worked for me and I’ll tell everyone I know that they might need to try one out.

Here is the link, you have to decide if one is right for you.

http://www.latemodelrestoration.com/buyersguide/tornado-fuel-saver.aspx

Now, where was my thigh master and my Blue Blockers…