Jay, you asked about runner length and other dimensions. The length from the plenum wall to the back of the valve is approx. 11.5". Plenum volume is approx. 625 cu/in. after porting without including the small area under the TB's in the top plate.

As you saw, I'm working with a cast manifold which is good from a dollars perspective but is somewhat one size fits all. IIRC It was originally developed for 500 Cu/in. NHRA Pro Stock way back in the day, but like the heads, has gone through some modest changes along the way.

PipeMax says they could be a bit longer for the displacement and RPM, but not much, and with the porting and the match to the cylinder heads, the taper is real close and I was pleased with the results given the compressed time frame and budget constraints I'd placed on the build.

Obviously you know that da Geek was involved, thank goodness, and I benefitted from their EMC experience. I welded the bungs into Dougan's dyno headers 12" from the port with the same orientation as much as possible. (Nice guys to let me hack on their dyno headers) I've replicated the bungs now on the in car headers, but the locations are not quite as uniform as I have to deal with installing/removing the eight sensors from the tight confines of a fully chassis dyno ready car.

Machoneman: I was frankly surprised that idle quality and drivability were as good as they are with the T-Ram and dual 2180 CFM TB's. In part I think it was because our baseline tune had a lot of drivabilty work done on the previous version of the engine which was only 6 cu/in smaller but had a single big TB on a tall single plane manifold and a slightly smaller cam.

Secondly, we went from an in neutral idle RPM of 1200 up to 1300 and the car has a pretty high stall converter in it at the moment which masks a lot of low speed stuff. BTW the cam is 282/294/113 with .830 lift. I am likely used to some less than ideal NVH in my supposed street car, but that's road we've gone down trying to be competitive at Drag Week with big heavy cars. That said doing this with EFI is way easier on gas and with far better manners than an equivalent dual four barrel carb set-up.

One last note, it was almost impossible to watch eight AFR readouts during a pull. We tuned off the two sensors in the collectors for the most part, but the addition of the eight AFR's in the primaries along with eight EGT's really helped fill in the gaps.

Done! I'll send them this week.

I have a set of cast iron BHJ FE 352-428 Honing Plates that I no longer need (my machinist also has a set) I would like to sell them for $100 plus shipping. I thought I should post here before eBay or the other forums. Any Interest? They are still in BHJ shipping boxes.

Bill Fowler

cdmbill@me.com
949-933-9093

Sorry, should have written 'conventional' sealing bead. As the photo shows there is an embossed bead in the steel layers, but not the folded metal over composite material of conventional gaskets.

Cometic's are a Multi-Layer Steel (MLS) gasket and therefore do not have sealing beads. I do not know if they have a part number for an OEM style 427 block with the reliefs in the cylinder bores. Cometic can make anything on a special order basis, for a cost of course.

Is your block still standard bore? That would be a find these days. A 4.25 bore gasket could be trimmed to match the reliefs with a fine grit cartridge roll on your Dremel or a typical die grinder. Try to keep the gasket clamped together at the area to be trimmed as you do not want grinding material to get between the MLS layers. I had some water jacket sealing issues on a large bore 385 motor with Cometic's that went away with Fel-Pro MLS gaskets. I do not know if Fel-Pro has a 427 FE MLS gasket at this time.

If your are going to modify the gasket you might as well look at the combustion chamber on your heads to see if they are a match for the block or if you have a step there. Next look at the quench pad on your pistons, usually a .250 to .395 wide flat "ring" around the circumference of the piston surrounding the dish or dome, you are looking to see what sharp edges, if any are in the combustion chamber that could lead to pre-ignition detonation that Jay refers to above my post. The entire chamber should be a nice contiguous shape at TDC.

Jay, that scoop on the Shelby in link above is a taller version of the Boss 429 scoop. Similar scoops appeared around that time on many early Ford Pro-stock cars of the period, Don Nicholson's Maverick for example, and Harwood still lists one in the older catalog I have.

Jay, given the 'stockish' idea which I agree with, given how great everything else looks have you considered a rear facing 'cowl' type setup. Yes that is exactly what I have on the '71 but it can more cleanly reflect the original design with the rising clearance towards the back. It also works well in the rain (you know how I know) and lets you conceal other things, in my case six gauges so the interior looks as close to a street car as possible.

Its not as original to the 69 Shelby look but you could retain the center NACA duct even if it exits behind the intake.

You could hang the throttle bodies off the back of the manifold and pick up isolated external fresh air via rear mounted filters. On mine this has shown a 40 degree drop in IAT as the car moves down track in typical conditions. Not as cool when you open the hood, but easier to work on and better functionality. My $.02.

BTW the manifold looks great and the process you've shared is priceless.