Reply to "Blue Thunder intake manifold porting"

There have always been dynos around, just not as prolific as today?

The first flow bench I saw was in 1976 or so. First dyno was in the mid 80s. Shelby was dynoing his race engines in '67 in the race shop in LA. I'm sure that was a present from Ford?


This debate over which manifold is better because one makes 8 hp more than the other, on the dyno, to me needs to be put into perspective. I am having difficulty with the concept.

I always thought I couldn't even tell 10hp. After all what that comes down to is a little crisper engine with new plugs, points and air filter.

My dyno was seat of the pants and if I was lucky enough to have the car running well enough on the drag strip and consistent enough with driving it to see the difference in 1/4 mile time.

Those were the days that if you had a 428cj Mustang, if you took off the air cleaner assembly, you could pick up 2/10ths in the 1/4. I may be mistaken but that equates to something like 80hp on the NHRA hp chart doesn't it?



I can only talk about my experiences. The difference between the Torker and the Shelby manifold, and ok, throw the factory manifold in there too, were really big. The Torker was better than 2/10ths over the Shelby manifold in the !/4.

The dyno now says the differences couldn't have been 10 or 15hp? The differences were like you had three other people in the car vs. just you. I don't believe the dyno now. I believe the time slips. 10hp doesn't act like that and give you 2/10ths better time.

On the track, the differences are substantial, AND the Torker in particular has never shown it is the top of the heap. Not so for the Holley Track Dominator.

I never ran the Holley Track Dominator personally but everyone I talk to that has and even dynoed them, the Holley manifold has always shown more and 1 to 2/10ths in the 1/4 is not uncommon.

Equate that absolutely any way that you want to. To me the dyno is just verifying what I thought was happening, that one manifold is better than the other BUT there seems to be a translation problem between dyno horsepower and results on the track? They don't come close to agreeing.



Exactly what the fascination now with the Shelby/Blue Thunder is, is beyond me at this point?

To me the value of it is it is a little better than the stock 4v manifold and it fits under the engine screen of the Pantera. It didn't come close to the Torker. It had NO top end by comparison, but was decent off of idle but much too much stock like. It would probably be a good manifold for an automatic transmission.

There have been a plethora of manifolds made for the Cleveland since those days. Granted most now don't want to deal with the iron 4v heads since the same has happened with new heads being offered but some manifolds can be applied to the iron 4v's with some work.

There is enough "recent" dyno data already by Dan Jones, like it or not, that should indicate some of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

If someone wants to spend time and money on trying to take a mediocre manifold by todays standards and make it run with the best available now, who's to stop them? Good luck pal.

The state of technology 35 or 40 years ago left room to find a lot of little tricks to be discovered by clever people like Smokey Yunick. Computer technology has really minimized that possibility now. Not eliminated it, just minimized it.

Tricks are now filed as models, updated and incorporated into new designs.



I'd guess that if someone Extrude Honed a Blue Thunder intake, there would be something more than just a few horse power to be gained? The practical question is how much cost per horse power is the number at now?

I saw the bill from Extrude Hone for a set of 289HP iron exhaust manifolds. It was $700. Somehow I suspect that the cost on that one was close to $700 per horse power. Others may think differently, but that's not even close to a good deal to me. It could be that I'm just very difficult to satisfy?