It's designed to light the catalytic converter off, and help burn cold startup fuel during warm up. The ECM dumps more fuel into the engine when it's cold because the cold interior engine surfaces cause fuel to condense on the walls. This causes the exhaust to be very rich. If air is added to the exhaust stream, it will burn in the cat much faster.

 

This. It doesn't inject any additional air into the intake stream. The air is injected directly into the exhaust stream. The air pump runs ONLY when the car is cool. As soon as it hits operating temp, the air pump should turn off. Also, holy ten year thread bump, Batman!

 

It doesn't run very long you can hear it turn on and off if you are in a garage or enclosed area, it seems like it only runs about a minute or two at the most, it has a turbo like sound going on and off. I haven't looked at it closely, but if it puts air into the exhaust stream it must divert through the head to the exhaust side ?. I always wondered why there is a gasket above the header, it must relate to that system ?.

 

I wonder if there is a way to turn it on at other times maybe it could exhaust flow and help performance wise

 

I wonder if there is a way to turn it on at other times maybe it could help exhaust flow and help performance wise

 

You could activate it with a switch but since it blows into the exhaust stream there would be no performance benefit under any condition, so useless to try it.

 

Yea I guess it would be cool if you could reverse it and instead of air being drawn out its actually forced in the intake like a Turbo lol

 

It's a very low CFM pump in relation to the engines intake.

 

NO.....