Free Web Site - Free Web Space and Site Hosting - Web Hosting - Internet Store and Ecommerce Solution Provider - High Speed Internet
Search the Web

Tare Down of the 3.3/3.8 Intake Manifold

I hear a ton about the 3.0 guys porting their manifolds, so I grabed a spare upper and lower manifold cheaply to play around with.

The lower manifold was easy to port and came out quite well.

The uppermanifold however can not unbolt like the 3.0's, so I'd have to cut it and then piece it back together to get it to be ported and working again. I also wanted to see how much manifold there is TO port.

So after porting the lower manifold (done but not installed yet) I cut the bottom 1" off of my spare manifold using a band saw. This piece will be used for the bottom of my custom self-design manifold so I know it will bolt up correctly & have the correct shape & located runners.

So now I have my piece I need, let's have fun with the scrap!

Ok, as you can see, I tried polishing the unit before I started cutting. Cleans up REAL well. As you can see, my first cuts involved removing that bottom 1". I then made a cut right through the middle (by the V in the "V6").

As seen here, this is the inside of the manifold. Have a good look, you'd never see one again unless you destroy one or get an optical camera able to be inserted into things of this size (like a fiber opitic?). The car this was on must have burnt a lil oil as the thing was all black inside before I cleaned it up (lots of carbon and dirt!). The brass (?) colored surface under the dirt is some kind of plating Chrysler did, perhaps to prevent rusting. It is rough and not very good for performance. The runners are small, restrictive... lots of room for improvement. But not much you can really do in terms of porting. As seen by the walls of this thing, you really do not have much material to work with.

Here is an other angle. To give you a general idea of things, that curcle could be taped to add an other TB I suspect and the neck on the opposite side could be cut off and a TB installed on that end... would require a tad fab work, not much... but I think you'd get far more by building a unit from scratch.

Here is my intake manifold design. VERY hard to see (sorry) but my scanner can't take something of this size (hey, 1:1 technical drawing). Basically it's a 3" ID metal tube, ~13" long enclosed in a metal box. On ea end could be a small neck where a 60mm TB from a jeep would bolt on. On the rear is the coil pack and assorted taps for sensors, vac lines, etc. The top has the Shelby "DODGE" logo installed, and the front will say "SHELBY 3.3 V6". The unit will be red or pink with black lettering. I tried coloring in my drawing so you can see it better, but it's still hard to see. The bottom runners will basically be built off of that 1" piece I cut off of the manifold at the top of this page and will attach to the bottom of this "tube".

I have most the parts needed for this and most of it is built. Still have to figure out how I want to do the two necks and then I have to build the runners and I can throw it on. The entire unit is JUST small enough that I have ~1/8" clearance between the top of this manifold and my hood lid!