TrickFlow intakes. Not what guys want to see

-
goldduster318 said:
Also who's running a super victor or trick flow and stock heads???
Click to expand...

Plenty of people run rpms and other intakes on stock heads.
The trick flows are just the first victim, if aluminum stays on course lots of parts could be discontinued when sales vs cost to restock stop making financial sense. Let's hope that doesn't happen.
 
China doesn’t have a shortage of any materials. They bought up everything in the first few months of the pandemic for pennies on a dollar. We are paying the price now as they have us over a barrel. It will only get worse. Kim
 
oldkimmer said:
China doesn’t have a shortage of any materials. They bought up everything in the first few months of the pandemic for pennies on a dollar. We are paying the price now as they have us over a barrel. It will only get worse. Kim
Click to expand...

Half true.
They've had major electrical supply and demand issues. Making aluminum is energy intensive.
Most of aluminum used to make loys allow over the world comes from China. Supposedly lots comes from the regions near Ukraine, and the whole Russian thing is pinching supply routes. I haven't looked deeply into that excise though.
So, China has no major issue supplying themselves raw aluminum. The rest of us gets what's left over - not much.
Bauxite makes raw aluminum, and it mostly comes from trouble spots too.. So the outlook is pretty desparate.
 
I am a tech for Mercedes and pretty much every intake manifold is now made from plastic. I don't see why edlebrock and trick flow and everyone else dont make carb intakes out of plastic. Maybe its a sealing issue with the old blocks- especially the china wall. The intakes are easily sealed with o-rings. I guess you could just seal the china walls the same way with sealant. Plastic is way lighter and in the long run, cheaper to make, thats why every car manufacturer is using them
 
I can’t prove this but the info is probably out there. What I’ve heard about plastic intakes is they work great, until the are heat cycled, unbolted for a period of time, then reinstalled. I’ve heard they are then prone to warping which would not be a good thing. Daily drivers aren’t taken apart like race engines are.
 
Last edited:
Only plastic piece that has failed me is a GM 350 thermostat housing...made of some sort of compressed plastic/aluminum powder crap that just fell apart. Im nt sure what the fault was on the 3.6 Pentastar oil cooler but I suspect the plastic body warped. 2 things in 25 years of plastic parts history. I'm not counting the hundreds of plastic clips I've broken though....:BangHead:. Im pretty sure a composite LA intake can be made with or without a high temp water port up front. Afraid of China? Make them in Mexico with half the Pentastar motors.
 
O-ring it. As all the plastic intakes Ive seen, although that is a small sample. AL intakes require a torque style gasket over a wide surface area. The composite intakes usually are torqued to only a fraction of an AL intake and use compression O-rings that take but a small amount of torque to seal. Not sure how a plastic intake would warp being secured by 2 fasteners at every port? composites dont have a lot of thermal expansion.
 
5-6 of you plastic lovers should get together and start making racing intakes. The smart intake manifold companies may be missing something and you guys could be millionaires and fix delivery issues for us.
 
pittsburghracer said:
5-6 of you plastic lovers should get together and start making racing intakes. The smart intake manifold companies may be missing something and you guys could be millionaires and fix delivery issues for us.
Click to expand...

nobody( at least not me) is in love with them. Just factually pointing out they have been in widespread use forever, and generally with very good results.
Sorry if it doesn't fit your narrative John. I sold hundreds of those 3800 equipped Lesabres, Park ave, Olds 88’s and 98’s and certain Grand Prix over the years. Most all of them with those plastic plenums. And i can tell you from experience they are among the most reliable cars i have seen in 32 years in the car business. Most anybody in the industry would agree.
 
Again we aren’t talking about street cars that are together for 100,000 miles. Don’t you think plastics were considered before by these companies. It has to be cheaper to produce. Heck maybe just use the raw materials from Walmart bags and single use water bottles. They would probably pay you to use them. Lol. This would make a great discussion post for one of you guys. Maybe I will start one for yinz
 
Last edited:
What happens to the o-ring grooves in your plastic intake manifold after you’ve milled the manifold .060” to fit on your race motor that’s had the heads and block milled a bunch?

I wonder how nice a job those 50 year old broach style head resurfacers(of which there are still many in service) will do on a plastic manifold?
 
B3422w5 said:
nobody( at least not me) is in love with them. Just factually pointing out they have been in widespread use forever, and generally with very good results.
Sorry if it doesn't fit your narrative John. I sold hundreds of those 3800 equipped Lesabres, Park ave, Olds 88’s and 98’s and certain Grand Prix over the years. Most all of them with those plastic plenums. And i can tell you from experience they are among the most reliable cars i have seen in 32 years in the car business. Most anybody in the industry would agree.
Click to expand...
Yes.We bought Grandma's 06" Lucerne with the 3800. Great car and will probably last another decade. I worked at a Buick dealer from 77-90 and witnessed many 3800's with well over 250,000 rounds and very few intake issues.
 
PRH said:
What happens to the o-ring grooves in your plastic intake manifold after you’ve milled the manifold .060” to fit on your race motor that’s had the heads and block milled a bunch?

I wonder how nice a job those 50 year old broach style head resurfacers(of which there are still many in service) will do on a plastic manifold?
Click to expand...

You have to account for it with the heads and block, not the intake. I'm sure there are plenty of people in the LSX world that have messed with their engines but still retain a plastic intake of one type or another.

On a big block, I think a full plastic intake is probably pretty easy. For a small block, maybe you make an aluminum lower to mate to the heads and have the water crossover and plastic uppers. Then you could have swaps between different length runner intakes, etc, etc with the same lower.

I do remember seeing a SBC AFR composite intake some years back but I don't know anything more about them.

You would think plastic would do a lot better with being able to make a thinner wall mold (and therefore big runners if needed) and also not conducting heat into the air fuel mix. Also a better surface finish. Should also be lighter.
 
PRH said:
What happens to the o-ring grooves in your plastic intake manifold after you’ve milled the manifold .060” to fit on your race motor that’s had the heads and block milled a bunch?

I wonder how nice a job those 50 year old broach style head resurfacers(of which there are still many in service) will do on a plastic manifold?
Click to expand...
Thats what silicone is for :rofl:
 
toolmanmike said:
Yes.We bought Grandma's 06" Lucerne with the 3800. Great car and will probably last another decade. I worked at a Buick dealer from 77-90 and witnessed many 3800's with well over 250,000 rounds and very few intake issues.
Click to expand...

in fairness, it wasn't till 95 they started putting plastic intakes on 3800 engines. They were metal till then.
As that first article i posted pointed out..were some initial “ teething” issues. But they got solved pretty quickly.
 
B3422w5 said:
in fairness, it wasn't till 95 they started putting plastic intakes on 3800 engines. They were metal till then.
As that first article i posted pointed out..were some initial “ teething” issues. But they got solved pretty quickly.
Click to expand...
No wonder why no failures. We had some oil pump issues with the early 3.8's but the gerotor pumps fixed that. Of course when the injected them all the CCC carb/drivability issues went away. I think about 87 was the start of the good years.
 
pittsburghracer said:
Again we aren’t talking about street cars that are together for 100,000 miles. Don’t you think plastics were considered before by these companies. It has to be cheaper to produce. Heck maybe just use the raw materials from Walmart bars and single use water bottles.....
Click to expand...
Wrong plastic. To think Edelbrock would shift to plastic injection molding when they already invested millions on sand cast foundries to make a competing product? Once the molds are tooling are compete, they can make a plastic intake in under 5 minutes with far less energy required , cheaper materials and NO CORE SHIFT. AFR sells one for the Chevy 350, ootb it bested a Stealth by 30 hp and never got hot. The water passages are metal lined and the screws are all threaded inserts. It has been done. ~$550 if you can find one....has a convertible top for different runner lengths. With GM being 80% of their performance market, they get the new stuff first.
64341702.jpg
 
PA66 (nylon 6/6) is $2.00 per kilo raw granules. The AFR intake weighs 7 lbs, a little over 3 kilos. So 6 bucks in raw materials minus the threaded inserts and water passages. Still pretty cheap and gar less energy to produce and less EPA regs. They do require an 210 C oven dryer but that is gar less to operate than an electric or gas smelter.
 
pittsburghracer said:
Man I hate to have to do your research for you guys. But if you can’t, I will. Please listen to at least a little of the video.

Google is a wonderful tool.

https://youtu.be/DsVbI4jAevwView attachment 1715871783 View attachment 1715871784 View attachment 1715871785
Click to expand...

Yup. I remember those.

Same story with so many early OEM manifolds that had wet passages too. For intakes that no fuel goes through, and no coolant goes through, polymer can work a treat. There's more than a few polymer manifolds for LS motors I think, and they often also work great, but I think they're also dry?

Chevy platform also has Mopar stuff beat when it comes to volume, by a factor of at least 1000 I would imagine. If it can't be done consistently for a chevy, there's no chance anyone is going to spend the development and tooling dollars on us Mopar guys.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top