My 440 Build. Which intake and WHY ?

Here is my opinion on the matter. I am building a 440 for my Charger and just bought the regular Performer. My reasons were this:

1. I wanted an intake that sat lower for hood clearance. I had the Edelbrock Torker II on it when I drove it when I was younger and had to run a drop base air cleaner to fit under the hood. The Performer was the lowest flange height
2. I don't get on my cars like I used to and don't often exceed 5000-5500 RPM. The regular Performer had a suggested performance band of Idle to 5000, compared to the 1500-6500 of the Performer RPM.
3. I thought of sticking with the stock intake, but didn't want to have to run an adapter plate to run an aftermarket carb.
4. I am converting to 4spd and plan to use stock 906 heads and stock HP manifolds instead of headers, so I don't need the extra flow of the RPM.

Now that I bought the Performer, I noticed some issues I wish I had noticed before I bought it. Mainly that it has the EGR ports that need to be plugged off (RPM doesn't have them), and it has the stock thermal choke horn (RPM doesn't have it either). Wouldn't be a big deal, but the secondary shaft on my carb hit that choke horn and wouldn't let me seat the carb on the intake, meaning I either needed to run a spacer for it to clear (which I didn't want to do in the first place) or hack off the top of the choke horn I will never use. I chose to machine off the top of the choke horn (took about an inch off the top of it).

I am running a Performer RPM on the 400 in my '67 Barracuda. I will say it works well on there. In my opinion the power band on that motor comes in at more like 2200. If I am cruising along and step on the pedal, you can feel it come alive at a little over 2000 rpm. I decided to try the regular Performer on the 440, but if I don't like it, I will be replacing it with a RPM.

If it were me, I would go with the Performer RPM, for the following reasons.

It looks better!! It doesn't have the choke horn to interfere with throttle shafts or double pumper fuel lines (which you shouldn't have an issue with on a Edelbrock Performer carb), and like was said before, the power range difference is minimal. If you are running a purple cam, aluminum heads, and full tube headers, I would put on the RPM intake that will match up better with the rest of your engine choices.

My 2 cents!