Here's some of the stuff I've been looking into lately

- Casting aluminum at home (for to make intake manifolds)
- Hmm, a 500cfm Holley 2-bbl is 43mm throttle plates and 35mm chokes, just about right for a plenum manifold... and that's basically half of a Holley 750 4-bbl... and I already have a 750...
- What amount of engine setback will allow a T2 trans to be installed without requiring a special driveshaft to be made (just a thought exercise)
- Modifications to the metering circuits on a Nikki, so that it would work well on a plenum manifold (won't NEED that Holley)
- To bridge, or not to bridge? That is the question.
- Calculating how much more running gear I'd need to make my own Lotus 7 clone (somewhat frightening - it's not much) and will it need emissions tested? (gotta put the evil engine mk.II into SOMETHING)
- and would it fit into the hearse? (in case it can't be registered)

Muhuhahahahaha.... Muhuhuhahahahaa... Muhuhuhuhahahahahaha....

- PJ (runs off to the Evil Lab)

 

Actually, it'd be engine set forward

And for God's sake, bridgeport!

 

But I wouldn't want full bridge, just half bridge... half bridge means running a 4-barrel carb, and I don't have any small enough to work well like that... but if I used my fully independent Nikki manifold with a normal 4-hole spacer, cut a plenum between the two secondary runners, and modified the secondary side metering circuits to operate properly on a plenum manifold... it might work well. GatorRX on Mazspeed has an Edelbrock carb (650?) on a 12A half bridge with the manifold setup I just described and he says it hauls total ***... but the main thing I worry about w/bridge is having an exhaust free flowing enough to not choke it down to sub-streetport HP levels, without being too loud.

 

Peejay, have fun with a Lotus clone. I owned three different original versions. After 40 yeras they are still building replicas. Before Colin Chapman went up market he had a simple approach. Build everything superlight, use somebody else's steering and suspension, spend your time and money tuning the engine.

With no weight and a Ford block turned into a twin cam, twin Weber 45s why take up flying!

But now with a 13B engine it would be supersonic!!!

 

I would think one would be able to tone down a good flowing exhaust. I assume that a 3” exhaust with four presilencers and a muffler would flow plenty and be very mellow. Imagine you could save on piping with all the presilencers.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of making my own long-primary system using a Pacesetter header, sandwiching 40" or so of 2" tubing between the header and collector, and making presilencers by getting some cheap glasspacks, cutting them open, stuffing some stainless steel wool in there instead of the fiberglass, and wleding them back up. Might be possible to get two glasspacks in per side, but space would be a concern. (they couldn't be next to each other, I don't think) Then 2.5" over and back to a 2.5" in/dual 2.5" out Dynomax muffler. I just hope it wouldn't be too loud, or sound like a fart cannon. My last 2.5" system was fart-cannon to the extreme, it sounded like a wounded bagpipe.

 

 

Aluminum casting looks like fun, but incredibly time and space intensive. I looked into it quite a bit. Melting the stuff is easy, but getting the sand prepared and keeping it ready would require a shed all to itself. Check out the Gingery book(s) at Linsdsey publishing.

Kerry

 

I was thinking about stealing Saturn's way of doing things... making a "positive" of the part out of Styrofoam, packing the casting sand around that, then dissolving the Styrofoam out with acetone and pouring in the aluminum. (Now you know why Saturn heads and blocks look like cheap picnic coolers )