Hi FE fans!
Yes, our new FE Tunnel Wedge intake was released to market last month. Good news and bad news, sales was higher than expected and we sold out of our first production run more quickly than we expected. We’re working with our foundry to get more castings and get these back in stock as soon as possible. The entire industry and supply chain is struggling to keep up with demand and our foundries (Cast and machined right here in Ohio!) are no exception, so it’s tough for us to give a more accurate estimate than “early next year” right now.
From the limited side view from those pics the ports look smaller than the BBM which is more like the stock size. Probably better for a street deal than the big port BBM.
We are aware of at least 2 different versions of the BBM manifold. We’ve not done a direct comparison, but we understand their early version had larger ports than their later version. Our design was based off of the OE manifold to get carb locations and overall style, but ports were designed from scratch to optimize flow with our heads.
What is the power range of it on a 427 cube FE? How does it compare to a medium riser below 6000 RPM?
There are too many variables for anyone to give you a solid answer on this, including heads, compression ratio, cam specs, etc. But, our Tunnel Wedge intake was designed to be usable for 390-428 CI FE’s in the 500-700hp range, and will deliver peak TQ/power between 3750 - 7500rpm (7500 rpm for those of you that like to gamble!). Actual HP/TQ peaks will depend heavily on your displacement, heads, and cam selection. We did our testing on a 396 running our PowerPort 175cc heads, and it did make more power and torque across the RPM range compared to our Track Heat single plane intake. A more modern carb option on the TW might have produced even better results.
For anyone still interested, ports appear to be a conservative MR design. I'd guess it was designed to work with the ports in their heads (they'd be stupid not to make them that way), and it looks like they could work with just about any standard FE head with some port matching. Just a guess, but I'd think they would work very well with their heads, and are aimed more at the street/strip crowd or smaller CI engines.
Yep, it is a conservative mid-riser design. We design all of our intakes to perform well right out of the box with our heads. We also test fit with competitor’s heads to help ensure good compatibility across the market. The intake runners are designed to taper slightly to allow for port matching. We test manifolds un-port matched, and can often pick up anywhere from 5-15 hp just through port matching.
The TFS heads do have a turbulence in the intake port flow at ~.610" lift, but with a little work the flow jumps up and keeps flowing. The TFS Track Head 4V intake manifold flows the best of any 4V intakes out of the box, and jumps up easily with just tweaks. Better than the old HR 4V manifold. Joe-JDC
Our testing (and other
3rd party testing) shows strong competition beating flow numbers up to .800” lift. While we don’t doubt a skilled builder could rework them and achieve better flow numbers above .600” than out of the box, it’s worth noting that a majority of the flow is happening at lower lifts and the valve is only open all the way momentarily, so you need to look at the whole picture not just max lift flow. Also, there can be significant changes in measured flow numbers depending on flow plate design (or clay) and bore size the heads were flowed with, especially with the shorter port of the FE head.
From what I see there they look pretty good is there anyway that you could pour the intake and see what the total volume is?
While it is tempting, and often common practice, to try to compare one head or manifold to another based on volume, there is much more to airflow than volume and volume is not really a relevant factor. We are often able to achieve competitive flow numbers with smaller runner and port sizes, and this can often result in better real world performance due to improved velocity and efficient cylinder filling.
