Reply to "Recommendations on intake manifold for A3 heads and shop that can bung it for EFI"

The A3 head intake port is really the same width as the 4v port but the roof is raised about 1/4" and the floor is raised about 5/8".

It resembles a BB Chevy rectangular port head.

The 2v port goes the wrong way. It really is lowered in relation to a 4v and forget about it with an A3.

The casting of the bottom of the A3 head is different then the 4v is. You need to fill in the bottom of the intake port just so it will seal against the A3.

All things considered, George's suggestion of using a different head all together is a very good suggestion.

I don't know what you are getting those heads for but you are going to find that they are VERY easy to sell and in fact might even have people coming to the door and refusing to leave until they cut a deal for them.

The intake has always been the issue for them.


Here's a thought, you could go to a Weber intake. Hall Pantera already has those that will bolt right up to the heads with little or no port matching.

Then you could go to individual runner fuel injection. Those throttle bodies are already available off the shelf now.

If you still wanted to use the blower, then you would just have to plumb the blower to a common air cleaner or air chamber.


It sounds more involved but you could actually wind up being cheaper to go that route.

Modifying a used Torker would probably be the most economically solution over all though.


The A3 heads, although quite good for their time, and actually still quite good now, are more of a collectors item these days.

Most don't even know what we are talking about when they are mentioned now.

They are 1981-3 racing items and some here weren't even born yet then.


On that thought, I sold A3's to what he described himself as, "an engine builder". When he got them, he got on the phone and claimed that I misrepresented them.

These things were virgin, virtually out of the box. He told me they were "radically modified". Now this is a "Ford Engine Builder"?

Seems he didn't know what an A3 head was and thought that was some sort of a generic term for a C302B head.


That "small port" A331 intake manifold that George posted with the C302 gasket on it was probably mine and those are the size of the ports the "builder" expected?

Oye carumba...kids!


Oh, just in attempting fairness to all, some will say the C302B head flows much better after it is ported.

I'm not going to deny that BUT the sets that I have seen AFTER they have been "done" bear a very very similar appearance in port dimensions to the stock A3.

Now that's just my observation which obviously I could not have seen all but inside secretly I'm laughing.