FE Intake Adapter

[MT63AFX]

Things have gone WAY, WAY too slow on the project for my liking, but I'm finally to the point where the basic design is finished and I am currently out shopping it around to pattern shops and casting foundries.  Here's a picture of the finished manifold 3D model.  The parts colored in red, like the bolt holes and the machined groove for the O-ring around the center opening, will be machined, not cast.  Also, all the surfaces shown in yellow will get an addition of 0.100" or so of material, to allow for machining to the final dimension:



According to the CAD program the raw casting will be about 32 pounds, which is way heavier than I wanted it to be, but it turns out that those flanges that the 351C manifold bolts to add a lot of weight to the raw casting.  Once the machining is done the manifold should come in around 25 pounds.

Shown below is the water jacket core, which turned out to be a lot more complicated than expected:



Lots of stuff going on around that part of the casting, including two sets of manifold bolts, port locations, and the distributor location, making it fairly complicated.  But at least its done now and according to the 3D model everything fits.

While the designer was finishing up the 3D model I've been working on a machining fixture for the manifold castings.  A couple months ago I purchased a big rotary table for my new CNC machine, that can be set up on its side and will rotate a part with 0.001 degree accuracy.  I wanted to couple this with with a trunnion table, which bolts to the rotary table and turns with the rotary table.  Once the manifold castings are bolted to the trunnion table, they can be rotated like they are on a spit, to allow drilling all the bolt holes at the various angles required by both FE and 351C intake designs, plus machining the mating surfaces on both sides of the intake adapter, machining the valve cover rail, CNC porting all the ports, etc. 

There are tooling companies that will custom build one of these trunnion tables, but they are generally pretty expensive (~$3K).  Rather than buy one, I decided to buy about $500 in steel and do it myself.  I found some pictures of trunnion tables online and kind of used them for the basic ideas, then drew up the table in my CAD program.  About four weeks ago I started machining this stuff.  The material I selected was cold rolled steel, and the trunnion table itself was over 3 feet long.  I found out right away that machining long sections of steel was rather tricky; for example, when I tried to face a 1" X 8" X 38" piece of cold rolled, just taking off about .020" from one side caused the whole thing to warp signficantly.  I had to go back and forth, one side to the other, taking off a little less each time, before I finally got the piece reasonable straight within a few thousandths.  As I encountered this problem I did a little more research, and found that I probably should have purchased cast iron for this job; cold rolled steel apparently has a lot of stresses inside from the rolling process, and as soon as you start machining it these stresses will start warping the material.  Cast iron doesn't do that, and so would have been a superior material for this purpose.  But finally after a lot of screwing around, and sizing down the original table thickness somewhat to allow for the machining requirements, I got the main table completed.  I also had to machine some 2" X 1" steel bar in about the same length to use as supports for the bottom of the table; I wanted to be able to mount the manifold castings on the table, but also a vise for some operations, and so the table had to be very rigid. 

Finally this weekend I got this project finished up.  I have been machining on this thing in most of my spare time for the last several weeks, and am relieved that it is finally finished.  I still have to mount it onto the rotary table, and then finish machine the top surface once it is mounted on the CNC machine.  But the tough stuff is all done now; here are some photos:







I'll post another picture of the whole thing mounted on my CNC machine in the next week or so.  I plan to start using it right away, to machine the CVR water pump adapters for FE engines.  On the FE intake adapter, I expect it to be another 6-8 weeks before the patterns are completed, and then I can have a foundry start pouring the first parts.  That'll be fun 

The water cross-over core would give a Patternmaker nightmares, . Why some many compound angles when 'radiusing' (such a word? LOL) would seem to be simpler. I understand the angles needed for the bolt bosses, but a Wood Model Moldmaker could 'whittle' a prototype if there weren't so many compound angles, especially in the 'tunnel' portion of the cross-over, just a thought from an old foundry worker who's seen a gazillion cores, lol, Rod. OOPs, maybe those lines represent radii, nevermind

[jayb]

I'm fired up today, because I finally got my hands on the first casting.  This was the first one that the foundry poured, and it used their initial estimate of where the gates and vents in the mold should be.  This one turned out to have an obvious defect on the top of the water jacket, but other than that it looks really good:







The quality of the casting appears to be really nice, with a nice finish and no evidence of porosity that I can find.  The only real issue is the void in the top of the water jacket.  After pouring this first one, the foundry guys modified the gating and venting on the mold and tried again.  Here is the second casting, just as it came out of the mold, with all the gates, risers, and vents still attached.  With the modified gating and venting the problem at the top of the water jacket is gone:





It was a great feeling to see this stuff finally being implemented in aluminum!  After cleaning up the first casting the foundry gave it to me temporarily, so that I could start work on developing the machining operations.  They also gave me some of the sand cores they'd buit for the ports, and also one that they'd built for the water jacket.  Here's a photo of the cores:



So far there are just the two castings, but now that they've got the gating figured out, they will pour another four castings for me over the next few days.  Then, next week the five castings will go to the heat treat place for the T6 heat treatment.  Early the following week the castings should be ready, and I can start working on the machining operations in earnest.  Hopefully by that time, using the defective casting that they gave me, I can have the fixtures ready to hold the castings for the machining operations.

This has taken a long time, but the end is definitely getting closer.  Right now it looks like I'll have a finished manifold to test by early to mid June...

[WConley]

Give the man a cigar!

Nice work, Jay.  It will be very satisfying to make noise with the first one of those.

[machoneman]

Great! They must be a damned good caster with only the water jacket issue on the very first pour. Hopefully, a harbinger of more good news.

[drdano]

WOO-HOO!!!!    It's gotta feel like 7 years old on xmas morning in your garage!  We're all just as excited to see these Jay!

[mmason]

Jay, would you know if the adapter were mounted on the engine and the center cover was off, if there would be enough room to remove  a set of comp cams solid roller lifters?

[jayb]

There should be plenty of room to remove solid roller lifters under the manifold.  The only issue I can think of would be the set for #5, where the distributor might get in the way.  I guess I will find out for sure when I get a manifold machined and try it...

[KMcCullah]

That's cool Jay. The quality looks comparable to any Ed casting. You wrote that the foundry gave you the first casting "temporarily". I'm curious why they would want it back. Just for the aluminum?

[jayb]

Yes, they take any castings that have defects and remelt them; I could keep this casting, but why pay for a defect?

[ScotiaFE]

Very Kool Jay!
I'm not seeing any little casting logo.
Like a "Brown" or "JB" .   
Years from now someone will be asking if it's a Brown.
That's quite a piece.

So now the really big question.
Are you going to mill them at exactly 45*. LOL

[jayb]

LOL!  Yes Howie, I do plan to mill the first one at 45 degrees and see how it fits.  Also I plan to machine a little "FE Power" logo somewhere on the manifold, but not in a highly visible location.  I think big logos on the parts tend to ruin their appearance...

[Boyes64]

  Okay Jay, the obvious question is how do I get one of these manifolds once the become available?  Granted I need to send you $$$, but I want to make sure I'm on your list for a manifold!  I'm on plenty of peoples lists these days, but those are usually their lists that start with an S and and with a T... especially with my wife!...

[jayb]

Before I commit to delivering these I'm waiting until I have the machining procedures finished and have made the first couple of prototype intakes.  When I'm holding a properly cast and machined intake in my hands, that to me is the green light when I can say that I will actually be able to deliver these.  At that point I will start a list of people who are interested in the manifolds, and post an advertisement in the vendor classifieds asking for email addresses or phone numbers for anyone who is interested in purchasing one.  About that time I will also be ordering the first production run of 50 intakes.  As I get the production manifolds machined, I'll go down the list and contact everyone as I have a manifold available for them.  Hopefully, I'll post the ad in about a month, and start delivering manifolds in July.

Also, I will not be taking deposits on these intakes.  When I have a manifold ready to ship and contact someone on the list, they can send the money at that time.  In the meantime if they've decided they don't want to buy one, they don't have a deposit hanging out there and they can just cancel the order.  That's the way I prefer to be treated when buying parts, and that is the way that I will operate.

[fetorino]

Jay

It is nice to see the project moving forward.  Those castings look really nice in the photos.  Too bad the ports are the wrong shape.

[jayb]

LOL!  You'll be glad to know that the high riser / tunnel port version is also in the works, although a couple of months behind the medium riser version...