Warning on cheap spacers

[66FAIRLANE]

Wanting to silence the IAC hiss on acceleration synonymous with Holley Snipers whilst wanting to retain an open spacer and not wanting to stack spacers, I bought a relatively cheap 4 hole spacer on ebay. At 1" thick the idea was to mill out the bottom 3rd to allow cross talk between plenums on my dual plane. Pulled it out of the pack, set it up in my mill upside down and it rocked a little. Odd. Took out, went over to my face plate and sure enough it rocked a little on the top surface. Turned it over and it rocked a MILE! Ended up milling the pockets and then milling the top .010 to get it as pictured (not too worried about the middle bit) and a whopping .040 off the bottom to flatten it. Had I not wanted to mill the pockets I may never have noticed this until it gave me grief. It just shows the ability of some companies to fuck up even the simplest part.

[Jb427]

i wonder if some heat would of brought that back into shape

[My427stang]

Crazy huh...certainly would have leaked, but for guys with a cast baseplate could have even brroken the carb when tightening

I have seen that too, Ebay cheapy that I did the same thing when I ran a carb on my car.  FWIW my Edelbrock EFI IAC makes funny noises on the truck when cold, but not hot, the Mustang system looks the same, but uses a Ford IAC motor not a GM and is silent.

[66FAIRLANE]

i wonder if some heat would of brought that back into shape

Doubt it. The fact that substantially more had to come off one side than the other and the witness's I was getting while milling indicate it was bowed, warped, twisted and generally a mess. The bottom much more so than the top.

[blu64galaxie]

Hmmm, I had a similar issue with a Trans-Dapt #2584 spacer back in May, for my 66 Fairlane intake swap.  High in the center....  Lotsa sanding, lol.

[Falcon67]

I've bought the cheap ones (Summit, etc) and all are in the trash.  I only buy the Moroso units if plastic.  I bought a 2" from ProForm on sale as a test - not sure what "aluminum" it's made from but it attached it's self to the gaskets and will require a trip across the mill to get them off.  Replaced with a 4 hole HVH tapered unit, no issues LOL. 

[BattlestarGalactic]

Ya, lack of quality in cheap molded parts.  Likely due to the material it's made from.  It's not temperature stabil.  It was molded flat, knocked out of the mold and then as it cooled it distorted.  Then again, if the mold was made so bad that the surfaces are not square it could amplify the problem.

The old adage.....cheap parts aren't good, good parts aren't cheap.