Ok, well to clarify with the resistor. They put the thing in place of the airflow sensor, cuz thats all the airflow does is depending on how open/closed it is, creates resistance to lower/raise the voltage supplied to it. Then the ECU interprets this and puts in an amount of fuel to match it. Tweaking or tricking this resistance is a way to add/restrict fuel going to the engine, which can increase horse power, but i dont know if it would add 20.... But as for timing wise, it woudlnt affect the timing(unless someway inadvertantly affected). All it does is trick your engine into putting more/less fuel into the engine depending on the resistor value. Basically, it tricks the engine into thinking you are blowin alot of air into the intake. Only thing i can think of that it will do is either wear out your fuel pump, burn too rich, or if its too lean, overheat your engine, umm, but timing wise, it wouldnt affect that i wouldnt think. I had a 96 z24 cavalier that i had a potentometer and an air/fuel ratio guage to raise/lower the resistance to get the desired fuel i wanted into the system. i ran that for about 6 months and i even designed a small microprocessor using logic gate chips and a few servos(i´m an electronic engineer major) so that way when i gave the pedal gas, the potentometer would raise the resistance so i could keep that constant fuel raise that i wanted. Cheap, but rather effective...i could tell the difference at first but after a while, i got used to it and wanted more...soon after that point, i got hit by a semi and bye bye cavalier....
hehe, and from personal experience, resistors are about $.10
