General Category > Quadrajet Carb Talk and Tips
Intake manifolds
Cliff Ruggles:
There really isn't that much material to work with porting a factory intake manifold. The biggest gains are going to come from opening up the plenum areas under the carb to the same apprx size/shape as an Edelbrock Performer or Performer RPM.
I "modified" my Pontiac iron intake is stages, doing the plenum areas first, drag strip tested it, spent some time at the openings at the intake gaskets, tested it again, then worked the runners a bit, tested it once again. After all the work was done and verified the best possible drag strip runs I put it on the dyno, then did back to back testing against a half dozen aftermarket intakes.
I followed that testing with adding spacers to it, and spacers to several of the aftermarket intakes as well.
Decades prior I did the same thing with the factory iron intake sitting on the SBC in my 1965 Chevy II Nova race car. That old iron intake, pretty sure it was a 1969 from a 350/300hp engine ran quicker than the older Edelbrock Performer intake I'd been using for quite some time.
I'll add here that when I tested, dyno and track the WORST intake of all of them was the Edelbrock Torker 1. What a complete POS that intake is. My modified iron intake outran it by 59 HP on the dyno. Yes, not a typo, 59 HP!
The best intake on the dyno to date has been the Torker II with a 1" spacer. It's a "turd" without a spacer but if you want bragging rights for peak dyno numbers get one. It still didn't outrun my iron intake back to back at the track. It was off quite a bit w/o a spacer and even with one and topped with my Holley 4781-2 850 DP carb it ran a tad slower in ET even though it ran a little higher in MPH.......
Cliff Ruggles:
I'll add one more thing here, this is specifically for Old Cars.
When you get time please do some testing of your own. Google searching the efforts of others just doesn't cut it for me. It's at least 2nd had information, you weren't there when the testing was done, nor did you have any input or help with any of the parts that were tested. If the magazines had anything to do with it they are EXTREMELY bias anyhow (ask me how I know that sometime).
From almost the first day I got into this hobby I NEVER fell into that BS put out by the magazines about how great all this aftermarket stuff is. Sure I ran out and bought Holley carbs, Mallory dual point distributors, and Tarantula intakes like everyone else did, but they SLOWED my car down at the track, didn't make it faster. Even the Crane Fireball cam I put in the 440 powering my 1970 Roadrunner cut the nuts right off of it. So I decided to start testing parts. I've tested truck loads of intakes, spacers, distributors, bug zapping coils, modules, camshafts, torque converters, air cleaner assemblies, air cleaner lids, spark plugs, headers, and cylinder heads. Even did the HPP and Engine Masters articles about 20 years ago which included dyno runs and backed it up a few days later at a private track rental.
So I'm more one to actually test a part vs Googling around and seeing how it did for someone else........Cliff
old cars:
interesting how you say you replicated the plenum of an Edelbrock . I don' get my information by google nor am I referring to intake manifolds from the seventies.
Anyone who says " I've tested truck loads of intakes" is when I stop listening.
Cliff Ruggles:
Well then.......where are the results of YOUR testing?
Since you don't want to listen, then you can not learn anything except for what you "google". You mentioned at least once that you don't race your car......so tell me how do you learn what works and what doesn't? Do you just believe that everything Dave Vizard says is gospel?
I have some DIRECT examples from customers who tried his cam recommendations and absolutely HATED the end result. 104LSA with the ICL clear down at 100 produced nothing but a "turd" and they couldn't amputate those cams out of their engines quick enough.
I used to buy into all that BS about aftermarket intakes, distributors, camshafts, etc. Then I decided to start testing them to see how much more power we could make on the dyno and quicker our cars would run at the track.
I also street tested the parts as well. This is when I discovered that "seat of the pants" testing is next to USELESS and some of these parts really pack some punch in a higher or narrower RPM range. Since we "feel" transition or going from making less power to quickly making more, or like a shot of NOS, we very quickly evaluate this as an improvement compared to smooth strong power over a broader RPM range. So transition very quickly fools the "butt meter" into thinking we have improved vehicle performance.
So how do you know aftermarket intakes outrun factory ones?
How do you know tight LSA works better than wide LSA in street and street/strip engines?
How do you know those JUNK accl pump seals you boasted a while back are better than the ones I sell?
I'm all ears?
PS: I did some over the last 30 days. I put a NAPA blue pump seal, a NAPA black pump seal and my accl pump seal in a metal container with 93 octane 10 percent ethanol fuel from BP. Early this morning I removed the seals and took the pic below. My seal is on the right, the two NAPA seals, including the "black" one you mentioned being as good as the seal I sell here. The two NAPA seals (Walker products origin) woln't even stay on an accl pump.....FWIW.....
Cliff Ruggles:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10227026615669088&set=a.2010563781498
As for factory intakes and carburetors, check out Anthony Mauro's "hemi-killer" Pontiac Firebird.
Yes, he's using a factory iron intake and one of my Quadrajets.......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k00pT74-8s
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