Billet Sheet Metal Style Intake Manifold for the FE Intake Adapter

[cammerfe]

Jay, have you ever looked at pictures of 'The High and Mighty'; one of the very first Ramcharger cars; run at the '59 Nationals at Detroit Dragway.. The upper plenum stood up on legs through the hood with the runners made from radiator hoses---clamped top and bottom. Would make it very easy to change runner length! 

KS

[jayb]

I have seen that one, Ken.  I also liked the trumpet exhausts on that car.

[cjshaker]

Jay, have you ever looked at pictures of 'The High and Mighty'; one of the very first Ramcharger cars; run at the '59 Nationals at Detroit Dragway.. The upper plenum stood up on legs through the hood with the runners made from radiator hoses---clamped top and bottom. Would make it very easy to change runner length! 

KS

I remember that car. Never even thought about the "tuneable" length...lol  I wonder if ribbed flexible hose would work better? Maybe Jay should look into doing his this way for even more...*cough*, flexibility

[machoneman]

Maybe ABS tubing today? Cheap, could use O-rings machined into the tubes, insides slicker than any unpolished metal. Would be a good idea for dyno testing some specifics for a particular engine, the results transferred to something more durable. 

[MRadke]

Would static electricity be a problem?

[WConley]

At Ford we did dyno studies with adjustable tubular runners.  The mathematical formulas only get you so far at the time, so we tweaked the lengths to fix dips in the torque curve.  Once you had the right combination of runner lengths, the twisting and turning began to get the thing to package!

Nowadays the compressible flow software is so good that they're probably doing it all in CAD.

[falcon428]

Here's the manifold model I just finished tonight for tuning to the fourth harmonic.  Tuning to the fourth harmonic knocks about 2" off the length of the runners.  This sets the plenum down quite a bit, and so now there's a bulge on the inside to accomodate the distributor.






Overall height of the manifold is reduced by about 2-1/4".  I haven't done the EFI version of the runners yet, but just for fun I plopped the front inlet Holley plenum top into place anyway.  This looks like it just might fit under the hood of a Mustang.  That would be cool...

Now we are talking. That would look good with my F2 pushing air thru it. . I want it to fit under the stock hood of my Falcon.

[gdaddy01]

that is some really cool stuff . I am always looking to learn , very good info . thanks 

[fekbmax]

jay,
any progress on the intakes since making your 3D modles ? Are they designed to work with the 13002 adapter with the straight ports or are you doing another adapter all together ? i did read where you were thinking of also doing some that would fit the 13001 adapters that many like myself already have. you may have addressed these things already and i prob missed it. thanks for any updates.

[newfalconowner]

kinda like the 351C weiand tunnel ram I modified for multiport injection for the adapter

[jayb]

jay,
any progress on the intakes since making your 3D modles ? Are they designed to work with the 13002 adapter with the straight ports or are you doing another adapter all together ? i did read where you were thinking of also doing some that would fit the 13001 adapters that many like myself already have. you may have addressed these things already and i prob missed it. thanks for any updates.

Keith, I'll be testing the 3D printed version that fits the #13001 intake adapter sometime in the next week or so, on my current dyno mule.  I am also currently machining the runners for the tunnel port version that I had at the FE Reunion; if they look OK when finished I will then get the plenum on that one machined.  I actually have two customers for the tunnel port versions so I am focusing on that version first.  After that I will machine the one that fits the #13001.  I haven't gotten any further than design on the one that fits the #13002 adapter.

[GJCAT427]

Jay, I`m interested to see how your TP runners come out. What length did the tubes end up? Not much progress on my build right now, but I have all the stuff to assemble the short block, just not the time.

[Joey120373]

I would buy one in a heartbeat if that helps !

[jayb]

Some of you may recall the billet intake based on this design that I showed at the PRI show, and pictured in that thread.  I've been talking to Kurt Neighbor about one of these for a while, for use on the high riser in his Super Stock Thunderbolt.  It took me a while but I finally got a design done and have machined Kurt's intake.

Kurt had provided me with a Hogan sheet metal intake and I took dimensions off that manifold and incorporated them into my design.  Of course this billet intake matches up with one of my intake adapters that I also did for Kurt; in fact he is using two different intake adapters to match up to two slightly different port configurations on a couple sets of his heads, and this billet intake will bolt onto either one.  The advantage of the billet intake over the sheet metal intake is twofold.  First, since the billet intake is machined, all the runners will be exactly identical, for consistency of the intake charge.  Second, according to Kurt one of the issues with the sheet metal intakes at high RPM is that they tend to vibrate, and that vibration will mess up the signal from the valve closing that you are trying to tune for.  This is related to the sonic tuning effect, where you optimize runner length to help fill the cylinders at a certain engine speed.  The downside is weight; the billet intake is heavier than the sheet metal intake.  Some pictures of the billet intake are below:








Also I'm currently machining one of my standard billet intakes for the #13001 intake adapter for another customer, and he was interested in a billet top, rather than the Holley LS tops that fit my adapter.  I have the CAD model and the machining programs done for this one now, and am waiting for the billet aluminum to arrive next week before I start to cut the metal.  Here are a few pictures of the billet top model.  It would be good to have a spacer between the top of the intake and the billet top, to add some plenum volume, but if there's no room it could just bolt onto the top of the billet intake.










Regarding the spacer, making it out of a non-conductive material like Delrin is a good approach, but when I checked pricing I was surprised to see that on a cubic inch basis, Delrin is significantly more expensive than billet aluminum!  I did make a 1" thick Delrin spacer for one of my SOHC intakes quite a while back, but either had forgotten how expensive it was, or the price has gone up quite a bit.  In any case, some time soon I will be creating the fixture for machining a spacer and then will be able to provide a complete billet intake, in case the Holley LS top is not desirable. 

I'm very curious to see what kind of results Kurt gets with his intake; hopefully he will go faster...

[Heo]

  i have a soft spot for machined metal
Beautyful work Jay