So I've been giving serious consideration to manufacturing an updated version of the old PSE style intake manifold. For anyone who is not familiar with this piece, it is designed as a "lower" intake manifold, and includes the valve cover rail, thermostat housing, distributor mounting hole, and valley area of the intake. It is drilled and tapped so that it will bolt to a wedge FE head with some countersunk allen head bolts, and then a 351C intake will bolt onto the top, to form the "upper" intake manifold. Here are some photos, from my book, of an original PSE intake manifold base:
This setup offers several advantages. For one thing, it has a removable center plate that can be accessed once the upper manifold has been removed. The center plate allows access to the lifter valley for inspection of lifters, without removing the valve covers or distributor, or breaking the water jacket. It also allows lifter replacement without removing the distributor or breaking the water jacket. Another advantage is that the 351C intakes currently available have been developed to a pretty high state, so they are excellent manifolds for a strong performance engine. This was fairly clear in my dyno testing for the book, where even an old Edelbrock Torker intake on the PSE base did very well on most of the engines. Also, the upper manifold can easily be swapped, again without removing the distributor, valve covers, or breaking the water jacket, so you can bolt on a 351C tunnel ram in about 20 minutes if you are so inclined.
I'd also put a couple of twists on this idea, to make it more versatile than the original PSE style manifold. To start with, I'd CNC all the ports to fit whatever intake design was going to be used. I'd also offer a version with straight extensions of the standard FE ports, and also one with no porting at all, for anyone who wanted to use the manifold base as a starting point for their own sheet metal intake. I would also make the intake available in a high riser or tunnel port version, with an optional machining program. Finally, I would plan my own FE specific intake manifold as a future project, to hopefully offer the highest performance option, rather than using existing 351C intakes.
I've been getting pricing for the required pattern tooling, and casting quotes for the manifolds themselves, and have everything I need to get going on this. When I got started I was hoping to be able to sell the manifolds for $295, but with the pricing I've been getting it will need to be $395 for me to be able to build 100 of these things and break even with all the tooling costs and so forth. I don't know if the market will pay this or not; after all, after spending $395 on the manifold base you would still have to spend another $350-$500 for a 351C intake to go on top. You can buy an FE Victor for around $550, which would end up being a lot cheaper. I don't want to do this if I can't sell at least 100 manifolds.
So what do you guys think?
Poll
