[RocktimusPryme]

Originally Posted by reacp911

but running a cast iron manifold strikes me as archaic

I mean, the Performer line of intakes dates back to I think 1982 from a quick Google search. Thats older than me, and Im in my 40s. So I think you are splitting hairs a bit when a stock iron intake seems archaic compares to a 40 year old aluminum design.

We can say Edelbrock missed the mark, but they sure have sold a lot of those Performers. So did they? And they are fairly big turds across all makes when compared to other offerings. They are just particularly big turds on Pontiacs because the factory intake is better than average.

40 years later we are better at the science of making power, and better at dispensing good information. At the time the prevailing thought was probably if its sold at the speed shop its better than factory. And who was there to tell them otherwise. This is also the same era of "my buddies 327 jumps coke cans in the rain" and "3/4 race cams". Its hard to fault the company for an old design (that strangely still sells).

They may have had some data that showed if you put it on a smogger head it picked up a tenth. When they go for a redesign in the RPM, making it taller for more performance potential is an obvious choice. Unfortunately that choice hurts the shaker crowd.

[Dragncar]

The Tomahawk intakes are in the stock location and work really well on 500 HP engines. 455s have plenty low end with a small single plane intake like the Tomahawk.

[SS-TA]

I don't think anyone will design a 2-plane manifold better than the factory manifold that will fit under a shaker hood without a lot of modifications. For example, this engine in the link below made almost 600 HP on a factory aluminum intake.

https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...d.php?t=797155

[65 Lamnas]

A little port work will wake up a factory aluminum intake. Back to back testing on my 462 the ported intake picked up 56hp and 28TQ over a stocker.

[NeighborsComplaint]

Buy a repro RAIV intake and port match it if you want to appear stock.

You could just put on a Torker II and paint the intake and heads. It will look close enough to stock to draw very little attention. With the shaker and pan in place, there isn’t much to see if it’s all painted blue.

[Bob Eiler]

Even then Edelbrock found it difficult to improve upon a stock Pontiac manifold.

[reacp911]

Originally Posted by Sirrotica

If it were true, why would holley make the carb flange so you can bolt a Q Jet directly to their intake? The intake doesn't know what the brand name of the carb it's bolted to does it? The metering of fuel is all that the engine cares about..

I love qjets. On a two plane manifold, it works, and almost as importantly, sounds great.

As far as using a qjet on a holley dominator, I went to holley in detroit and talked to the engineers when I was unhappy with the behavior. They said to use a holley. In the catalog, it even said, "best performance with a square bore carb". It didn't say this for other makes.

The beauty of a holley is tunablity. You can change jets easily on the car. Accelerator pump tuning is very easy. On a qjet, accelerator pump tuning is limited. One big problem with the qjet on the dominator was soggy response in part throttle driving, that I fixed easily with the double pumper by upping shooter size

Carbs do not just supply a generic amount of air an fuel. Since we are dealing with a two-phase flow, distribution is important. To this end, holley thottle bodies pivot towards the middle, qjets, to the back.

30 years ago, when I tried the qjet on the dominator, wide range AF meters did not exist. Perhaps it would have helped.

[67Lemons]

Originally Posted by Formulajones

The factory manifolds are already being cast out of aluminum for years. Just get one of those. I can tell you they work a hell of a lot better than the performer and they accomplish a few things for you. They look stock because they are, they will fit the shaker without jacking stuff, it's aluminum so it matches your heads, and they perform as good as the iron intake.

I've done back to back testing with them out of the box on a high 12 second car and it was identical in et and mph to the factory 70 RAIII iron intake.

Easy solution

Besides the aluminum version of the RAIV manifold that has numerous complaints on poor quality and not lining up with the ports on the heads what other aluminum factory intakes are being reproduced? I’m unaware of anything else, the OP stated that he doesn’t want one of those due to the numerous issues/complaints.

[PAUL K]

Originally Posted by Bob Eiler

Even then Edelbrock found it difficult to improve upon a stock Pontiac manifold.

Hi Bob that letter is great thanks for sharing

[reacp911]

Another car I know fairly well is the Porsche 911SC. Porsche claims 180hp for this car using a 6500rpm redline and a 34mm port size

Based on the edelbrock performer runner area of 2.19in2, I calculated the hp a pontiac should make on the basis of runner area and volumetric efficiency. I used .95 vol.eff for the porsche, .85 for the pontiac. The number I came up with was 330, with an rpm redline of 5900. This would of course be net hp. This assumes an optimum cam. Edelbrock says idle to 5500, and the crane cam I used was power up to 5600rpm.

I did the same calc using the holley dominator that has a runner area of 2.5 in2 and the calculation was 380hp

[reacp911]

Originally Posted by Bob Eiler

Even then Edelbrock found it difficult to improve upon a stock Pontiac manifold.

Thanks for this, and to all the other posters too. I'm still not able to "like" posts on my pc, for unknown reasons.

[mgarblik]

"The truth is Pontiac engineers made such a good intake that the aftermarket has nowhere to pick up performance over it in a 2 plane intake. That's why the single planes can pickup performance over a 2 plane when it comes to more than a street engine, say above 500 HP. The factory dual planes are already very good as designed." Sirrotica Quote.

I have often wondered how frustrating it must have been for Edelbrock to spend time and financial resources to produce an aluminum intake manifold for Pontiac engines that was just a lightweight turd? They tried more than once too. The production iron intake and Q-jet carb that Pontiac made millions of was still the best performing set-up for engines up to 450-500 HP. That demands a whole different level of respect for Pontiac engineers vs say the "mighty Chevy" engines. Bolt virtually any aftermarket part including intake manifolds on a Chevy engine and it improves it! What does that say about the engineering that went into the original components? To me it says allot more about how good and well engineered the Pontiac engine was and a little less about how bad Edelbrock stuff was. JMO

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by 67Lemons

Besides the aluminum version of the RAIV manifold that has numerous complaints on poor quality and not lining up with the ports on the heads what other aluminum factory intakes are being reproduced? I’m unaware of anything else, the OP stated that he doesn’t want one of those due to the numerous issues/complaints.

The complaints are unwarranted. Weve discussed this many times how these intakes were patterned off the original pieces. Even iron intakes are documented as being the same. If it bothers someone you guys should be more than capable of spending a few minutes with a grinder to clean up the ports if desired. But I've ran them right out of the box with no discernable power difference over the iron piece. If you want stock appearance and an aluminum intake it's still the best option going, and they work perfectly fine.

In fact I've had 3 of them in my hands as of recent and I've made over 500hp and almost 600 ft lbs. With them on mild 455's in untouched unported form.

If we were talking about a max effort build I wouldn't even be looking at a dual plane anyway so you have to ask yourself what are we really doing here?

[Skip Fix]

Dyno tests on my RAIV 400 motor stingy dyno though muffler my HO and a 800cfm 73 SD SR Q ket , a 3310 holley on a T1 and then a T2 all dynoed the same HP. Single planes lower TQ at bottom end. Q jet on the T1 at the track killed bottom end even with a 4000 stall and 4.56s. Gained a couple of MPH but lost so much 60 ft ran slower.

First E head 455. My cleaned up 72 HO SR intake, UD 259/262 solid roller through 3" exhaust-swap at track from a 73 SD QJet reworked by the Carb Shop Brad Urban swapped WITH an open adapter a Demon 850 DP(when they were first out and good) idled better out of the box and picked up 0.3 seconds! So much for an adapter killing things. Later swapped on a single plane T2 and the Demon idled even better and picked up enough to kill the torque convertor and trans(stock rebuilt 350). Not an at the track swap so can't tell you identical exact increase. But with a new looser TQ convertor asnd built TH 350 picked up 0.75 seconds! That was about a 550-575 HP motor.

I have some posts and pictures on my Repop RAIV intake and it took a second one to get OK ports but they still needed weld and a lot of grinding to even get close to a FelPro 1233 gasket! But it is pretty close now.

So all depends on what you are trying to do I do think a stock intake is getting to be the "restrictor" at about 500 HP. Why even back in the day of unported heads in SS they used a Nash or even the Torker 1!

[Skip Fix]

Footnote that first E head motor with the first convertor and the HO intake and Demon in an HPP Shootout in the 100 degree Dallas heat was low 12s instead of high 11s liek it was in good air, but Floyd Hand's car was the same usually high 11s-and a Holley!

[Formulas]

Originally Posted by Formulajones

The complaints are unwarranted. Weve discussed this many times how these intakes were patterned off the original pieces. Even iron intakes are documented as being the same. If it bothers someone you guys should be more than capable of spending a few minutes with a grinder to clean up the ports if desired. But I've ran them right out of the box with no discernable power difference over the iron piece. If you want stock appearance and an aluminum intake it's still the best option going, and they work perfectly fine.

In fact I've had 3 of them in my hands as of recent and I've made over 500hp and almost 600 ft lbs. With them on mild 455's in untouched unported form.

If we were talking about a max effort build I wouldn't even be looking at a dual plane anyway so you have to ask yourself what are we really doing here?

I have never seen a OE iron intake with near as much misalignment as the repop aluminums, They do a fine job on the externals but the mold placement for the internal runners leaves alot to be desired, Its not so bad to have the material there to remove to make right but when material is flat out missing or a divider is kicked way over .. no thanks

[Steve C.]

A tidbit for interest.....

"The Iron's ports are all over the place as far as casting alignment and sizes go. Number's 7, and 8 measure right at 1.900" tall, where the rest average out from 1.950" to 2.010" tall. The picture shows the odd (1-3-5-7) side of the intake, and clearly shows that you'd have a pretty good vacuum leak at #7. Same goes for #8 on the other side."

See post number 9 here:

https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...d.php?t=693767


.

[mgarblik]

Originally Posted by Formulas

I have never seen a OE iron intake with near as much misalignment as the repop aluminums, They do a fine job on the externals but the mold placement for the internal runners leaves alot to be desired, Its not so bad to have the material there to remove to make right but when material is flat out missing or a divider is kicked way over .. no thanks

That has been my experience as well. I have had my hands on 4 of them. 1 I just sent back. 2nd one took about $700.00 worth of welding, shaping and fitting to make a decent manifold out of it. 3rd one needed the tops of the runners welded to provide some gasket sealing surface. 4th one going on iron heads needed 3-4 hours of massaging to line everything up, no welding required. But the gasket sealing area was about 1/8" flange. I understand they have a very low price point. I do think most people would have no problem paying an extra $100.00-150.00 for a manifold that actually fit correctly so it could also perform well without allot of work.

[PAUL K]

Every manifold with the exception of possibly the SP2P will support 400 HP. Almost every manifold will support 500 HP with some work. Many of the available manifolds will feed a 600 HP motor. The Victor will make well over 1k HP without welding. There's more than one cast manifold out there that will make more than 1,100 HP without welding. I feel we are fortunate to have so many choices. Maybe I look at things differently, but I'd pick one and finish the project.

Don't get me wrong, I wish everything was perfect and would "bolt on" but in my world that is seldom the case.

[PAUL K]

PS the reproduction intake manifold quality concerns have been beat to heck on this Website. Thousands have been sold and very few returned. Looking at it from almost every angle, the availability of that manifold was a huge win.... Like it or not.


Maybe we can go back to harping about the 041 cam, the IA1 blocks or the Butler wide-ports; the days a nine second Pontiac was unheard of and staying in front of a 5.0 Mustang was an accomplishment.


I also find it interesting that a pretty pricey intake manifold was brought to market recently that appears to have fuel distribution issues. Not a lot of complaints about that one.... I guess if one pays a lot of money for a poorly functioning intake manifold it's best to pretend it's great

Rant over and thanks for listening