[Tom Vaught]

I must have one of the early 6 Shooter intakes too.

I looked at my intake a few minutes ago and can see the obvious issues that the other poster had.

Here is the deal:

There are two bolt holes on top of the water cross-over. When that area was cast there was a very generous radius put into the casting mold where the mounting flange blends into the top of the cross-over. This makes an bolt hole that does not have a parallel surface with the head flange. You put a bolt without a washer into the hole and only 1/2 of the bolt head will contact the manifold due to the generous radius. This is present on both sides of the cross-over.

THE ONLY way to fix this deal is to spot face the area around the bolt hole so that you have a FLAT surface to apply even torque to the surface of the mounting flange. I can see where the man thought by grinding on the surface you would make it better. The only way to do it right and have it look right is with the spot face tool. That is two of the 4 issues mentioned by the poster.

The other two issues are a similar problem with the bolt holes in the front of the #2 runner and #1 runner. Same kind of WIDE generous radius for the casting but again the radius does not allow the bolt to seat properly. In this case the radius is located in the blend from the mounting flange to the runner front side wall. Problem here is that a normal spot face tool will not work as the carb mounting flange masks the bolt hole from a line of sight to the centerline of the mounting hole. A special tool that would go through the manifold bolt hole then allow attachment of a cutting tool is necessary. Such a tool is made but the average Pontiac guy would never have access to it. With this tool the area could be spot-faced parallel to the head flange like the cross-over hole.

It appears to me that we had a case of OH $chit! on the runner bolt holes and lazy attitude on the rest of the holes AFTER they found out they could not do the front runner holes properly. Probably someone in production said, "Screw it, let the customer figure this design screw-up out".

I personally know that with the right tools and McLaren Racing's expert machinists I could get my manifold fixed. It would not be cheap. Course I did not pay $2600 for my deal as I bought the thing at the last Norwalk Pontiac Nationals swap meet.

Asking a customer to cough up an additional $350.00 to fix his intake sounds about right for the labor costs to fix the thing BUT for the same $350.00 you can buy a brand new Ames Performance Aluminum Rochester carb intake. It might require minor tweaks but you are not out $2600 before you even get started in the deal.

The casting guy at BG as I said kicked out a decent looking intake BUT the machining guys got lazy of the final machining with bolt holes in the wrong spots on the carb flanges, no spot faced bolt holes, non machined intake to head flange surfaces, etc.

JMO

Tom Vaught (ENGINEER and Pontiac Enthusiast)