http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...8&page=1&pp=15
Wanted some of the smart folks in here to take a look at this.

 

I admire all the work that went into this but have to ask... what was the goal?

As I see it, there's a nice weight reduction but what else? The Edelbrock Air Gap, which is one heck of a manifold, works well because of the plenum and runner design. The "air gap" thing is just a marketing ploy as I see it cause the intake doesn't really stay any cooler.

If you want a cooler intake, without a bunch of re-engineering, look to a couple of coatings.

My 2 cents.

-Mindgame

 

It really does highlight how small the plenum area is, doesn't it?

 

pretty cool lookin, but as stated- its just for looks not performance.

However, I wil say that it does do a good job of highlighting the crappy design (runner shape and plenum size).

He would have been better off (from a performance standpoint) to spend that time properly shaping(welding) the runners and making the plenum larger.

 

Hi guys, I crafted this intake as a "what if" project to see if a few ideas I have will amount to anything more than a pile of aluminum chips. I plan on doing some track testing with this over the next week or 2 and see what it does.


thanks for compliment, the major goal was to reduce the recovery time from heat soak. By removing mass from the intake it will take less time to remove heat. It gets hot like any other aluminum intake, but it cools down faster than the stock piece. There is 6 lbs less mass so once you start driving again the cooler incoming air has less work to do to cool it down. I have not run nitrous thru it yet for a full run, and thats where I am hoping its biggest gains will be realized. I run a wet system, so the -120 degree F mist in the plenum and runners should cool the air temps down sooner during the run.



I agree with you, the air gap in a standard carb style manifold doesn't cool the intake, as heat transfer thru aluminum is very good, and negates any insulating properties the air would have. Hopefully, getting rid of 6 lbs of aluminum will allow it to cool down faster once the airflow thru it starts back up as the car drives off. Coating the intake is an option, but since I whipped this out in 3 days right before a weekend race, I didn't even consider it.


It really is a small plenum, and while grinding away, i thought of different ways of enlarging the plenum without having to move the fuel rails and all the re-engineering associated with that. I did port the intake inside as well, straigtening out as much of the knee at the injector bosses as possible, among other areas that were retouched. I really did not want to redesign the intake, but hopefully improve on it. I am thinking of lengthening the runners a bit(1.5 to 2 inches) and raising the top of the plenum for the next step. At the least, I had some fun carving out a different looking intake.

here are the pics...

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y5.../Lt1airgap2.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y5.../Lt1airgap7.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y5.../Lt1airgap3.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y5...Lt1airgap14.jpg

 

I like the looks of it it is not your norm LT1 manifold. I like the idea of adding some to the ports and the plenum.

 

Well... not necessarily. The efficiency of heat transfer is more dependent on surface area. Reduction of mass can be beneficial.... or may make things worse. I don't remember all the formulas and theory because the last time I dealt with this subject was way back from my days at Berkeley. We were working on heatsinks to cool mainframes... this was way before anything like Thermalright or any of the other guys came along. And way too long ago for me to claim any kind of proficiency in this subject anymore.

You probably DO have a good deal more surface area though and that should help things if you can get enough airflow across it. That's the key though.

This thing about intake heat comes up all the time though.... polymer intakes, guys wanting a plastic intake, etc..

I'm using a thermal barrier and heat dispersant coating from Swain, and as mentioned before, the intake cools down very quickly. You can put your hands on it after a 1 hour snail crawl home through the traffic. Not bad. Not as good as a poly intake but hey... probably about as good as it's gonna get.

Not to take anything away from what you've built. I like seeing this kind of thing.

-Mindgame

 

From reading some of your posts, I see that you have a good understanding of what makes an engine perform, and I appreciate your feedback. Where did you have the coating applied? I am assuming inside and outside of the runners and plenum, but what about the gasket surfaces? Oh, what intake are you running? Did you notice a performance improvement after the coating application other than being cooler?

I ran the car tonight at my usual track, and with no other changes, except the intake,
I picked up 3/4mph NA and 1&1/4mph on nitrous in the 1/8 mile.
more details in the thread in LT1 tech.

 

Good job....

I had one of these deals laying around the shop for a while now, never really thought it was worth a ****, should posted it a year ago when I did it.

If you are going to compare the times.... learn what the DA was both nights you did this and compare them then. This should give you some sort of a comparison for them.

BTW, I just work on insulating the bottom of the intake off from the motor better now rather than doing all this work to pull the same thing off..... There a a few good tricks you can do to seal the motor and the intake off from one another to keep it cool. I like carbon fibre plates under the intakes myself, when you have them showing. Looks even better than the diamond plate, has less weight and doesn't transfer as much heat.

Your timeslip should have a date and time on it.... Plus weather conditions. You can look up some Density Altitude correction factors on the net, just takes some math and ability to understand the process of what you are doing there.

Obviously you found a gain there so trying to quanitify that gain scientifically is a good way to go about doing it. Some people understand that....(obviously some don't ) I like to have some close comparison to what was actually gained, because when you are looking for little bits here and there you need to know if you made them or not.

NP

As I said I did this a while back and on the single plane stuff I do, I end up doing the same thing. I saw some interesting tricks that MBE Cylinder Heads did to a BBC manifold and just expanded on it a little more.

E-mail me and I can send you a pic of a intake with a carbon fiber base plate and maybe can give you some help with that.... It's not cheap to do because of the materials but if you have a mill it's possible.

Bret

 

This works well too.
slight modifications may be required

 

I did something similar to Bret,Except I used Lexan in the valley cover of one of the sheet metal intakes I ran on a Ford.It just had the end pieces welded to the flanges and a lot of #10 machine screws.
It was done to look at the rollers after a pass (no rev kit) and push rods.The heat thing too but was not the primary reason.