Worst 4V intake manifold Ford ever cast?

[Joe-JDC]

I have just picked up a couple of '83-'85 302HO 4V intake manifolds, and wanted to get some flow figures for them.  I had a Stock Eliminator racer ask about porting one, and I offered to do so as I had time.  He never followed through, so when a couple of the intakes came up on Craig's listing locally, I picked two of them up for $125.00.  The ports are tiny, the manifold is definitely a low riser, and just looking at it makes you wonder how the Mustang ran so well for the era.  I have flow figures for 292/312Y block 4V intakes, Lincoln Y blocks, 289 iron 4V, 302 4V, and all the FE's/429/460s/4.6modulars/5.0HO EFI/5.8 EFI from the last 35 years using a flow bench.  This little intake manifold only flows 140cfm average, and the '83-'85/E7 heads flow 169 cfm as cast.  Not a single runner flowed over 158cfm.  Here are a couple of pictures of the intake manifold.  Joe-JDC

[Rory428]

Yeah, those 83-85 5.0 4 barrel intake are pretty bad. I ran a 1985 Mustang 5.0 in NHRA Stock Eliminator, where modifying the factory intake manifold is not allowed by the rules.Not only are the ports tiny, it is really low and flat, and has the EGR spacer plate to raise the carb up, otherwise the carb linkage would be sitting on the intake manifold itself. I ran my Mustang from 2003 thru 2013 in Stock, and for a couple more years as a bracket car, with the Stocker engine. The best that I ever ran with it as a 100% NHRA legal Stocker was a 12.31 at 107 MPH, but one weekend, I wanted to see how bad the stock aluminum 4 barrel intake was, so I replaced the stock intake with an out of the box Performer RPM Air Gap, and it improved greatly, to 11.84 at 111 MPH, with no other changes. Keep in mind, this was with the legal Stocker engine, so .444" lift, 8.4-1 compression ratio, and absolutely unported big chamber, small valve 302 heads.

[TomP]

The SP2P may give it a run ! Half a second is probably 40-50hp i'd guess.
 On a 390 the guy who machined my 427 had a mid 70's F350 ramp truck with a 390 and 4 speed. Back then towing to the nearest track meant hills and he said he thought the SP2P would be good for that truck. But with the wide ratios and big RPM drops of the NP435 tranny he's rev it till it fell on it's face at 4000 rpm and quickly shift and it would be bogging so bad in the next gear he'd have to shift back down. He put an iron 4V back on and it was back to normal and would rev 5000 or more in gear.

[Joe-JDC]

But the S2P2 was not cast by Ford.  The lower ports on this intake only averaged 129cfm.  Joe-JDC