"grumpy?
Im thinking of swapping from the stock iron intake on my 454 BBC, in my truck to the EDELBROCK air gap oval port intake, is it worth the time to do that?, the truck runs decent now even though its mostly stock, and Im thinking of adding headers later will that hurt or help, the intake results?"
heres a stock intake. it should be obvious there less restriction in the newer aluminum aftermarket design below
WATCH VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDG22KojIDA
Those cast iron intakes easily weigh 50 lbs and while they are not really restrictive on a stock engine, thats mostly designed to operated below 4500rpm,most of the time, there ARE significant gains to be had even with oval port heads,over most of the rpm range. Ive used the RPM oval port intake on many BBC engines and I cant think of a single instance where there were not at least marginal gains over the stock intake, look at it this way. your going to be removing at least 25 lbs off the front of the car doing the swap, and Id be very surprised if you don,t gain at least 8-12 hp,and larger gains are certainly possible, especially once you add the headers the intakes higher flow will further increase as exhaust scavenging allows it to flow more, the intake would most likely provide closer to 20-25 hp over the stock intake in that case. if it was my car ID sure swap, if you decide to go to a more performance oriented cam design in the future, that has a bit more lift and duration, allowing the engine to breath at higher rpms, the intake gains would be even more significant as the stock intake would start to be rather restrictive. but obviously youll need to measure hood clearance as in a few cases thats an issue
read this
http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/113_0407_best_induction_combo/carb_ratings.html
"n our less drastic example, the RPM Air-Gap slaughtered every other manifold in the test by every measure, with the exception of the plain RPM manifold, which was only a few numbers behind the Air-Gap. We think that the ZZ454 setup represents the threshold at which the Air-Gap price is either worth it or not. If your engine is milder than this, you probably won't lose much power by saving the $38 difference between the Air-Gap and the regular RPM. But if your engine is a little more radical than the ZZ454, we'd go Air-Gap every time. However, Edelbrock warns that it's too tall to fit under the stock hoods of Corvettes, '64-'67 Chevelles, and '67-'81 Camaros."
if you have the necessary required hood clearance and have a low restriction exhaust ,headers and the gearing to allow the engine to effectively use the extended power band a longer duration cam can give you, a high rise single plane intake can some times provide surprising performance gains, over the fairly restrictive stock intake designs, gains of 40-60 hp with the correct aftermarket intake, a better cam, and long tube headers are far from rare, port the heads, add some compression or add better heads and add some compression to the earlier mods and you can double those results.
I've found that some of the high rise single planes like the weiand team (G) like pictured above with a decent cam in the .575-.600 lift and 235-240 duration @ .050 lift range really wake up a camaro, or nova, etc. with a 396-402 BBC with oval port heads , if you install the correct matching rear gearing (usually a 3.73:1-4.11:1 and 3000 rpm stall speed converter, or a manual transmission and matching traction bars etc.
Im thinking of swapping from the stock iron intake on my 454 BBC, in my truck to the EDELBROCK air gap oval port intake, is it worth the time to do that?, the truck runs decent now even though its mostly stock, and Im thinking of adding headers later will that hurt or help, the intake results?"
heres a stock intake. it should be obvious there less restriction in the newer aluminum aftermarket design below
WATCH VIDEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDG22KojIDA
Those cast iron intakes easily weigh 50 lbs and while they are not really restrictive on a stock engine, thats mostly designed to operated below 4500rpm,most of the time, there ARE significant gains to be had even with oval port heads,over most of the rpm range. Ive used the RPM oval port intake on many BBC engines and I cant think of a single instance where there were not at least marginal gains over the stock intake, look at it this way. your going to be removing at least 25 lbs off the front of the car doing the swap, and Id be very surprised if you don,t gain at least 8-12 hp,and larger gains are certainly possible, especially once you add the headers the intakes higher flow will further increase as exhaust scavenging allows it to flow more, the intake would most likely provide closer to 20-25 hp over the stock intake in that case. if it was my car ID sure swap, if you decide to go to a more performance oriented cam design in the future, that has a bit more lift and duration, allowing the engine to breath at higher rpms, the intake gains would be even more significant as the stock intake would start to be rather restrictive. but obviously youll need to measure hood clearance as in a few cases thats an issue
read this
http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/113_0407_best_induction_combo/carb_ratings.html
"n our less drastic example, the RPM Air-Gap slaughtered every other manifold in the test by every measure, with the exception of the plain RPM manifold, which was only a few numbers behind the Air-Gap. We think that the ZZ454 setup represents the threshold at which the Air-Gap price is either worth it or not. If your engine is milder than this, you probably won't lose much power by saving the $38 difference between the Air-Gap and the regular RPM. But if your engine is a little more radical than the ZZ454, we'd go Air-Gap every time. However, Edelbrock warns that it's too tall to fit under the stock hoods of Corvettes, '64-'67 Chevelles, and '67-'81 Camaros."
if you have the necessary required hood clearance and have a low restriction exhaust ,headers and the gearing to allow the engine to effectively use the extended power band a longer duration cam can give you, a high rise single plane intake can some times provide surprising performance gains, over the fairly restrictive stock intake designs, gains of 40-60 hp with the correct aftermarket intake, a better cam, and long tube headers are far from rare, port the heads, add some compression or add better heads and add some compression to the earlier mods and you can double those results.
I've found that some of the high rise single planes like the weiand team (G) like pictured above with a decent cam in the .575-.600 lift and 235-240 duration @ .050 lift range really wake up a camaro, or nova, etc. with a 396-402 BBC with oval port heads , if you install the correct matching rear gearing (usually a 3.73:1-4.11:1 and 3000 rpm stall speed converter, or a manual transmission and matching traction bars etc.