Reply to "Time for a new intake?"

What you have isn't bad. It depends on what you want out of the engine though.

That intake was on my car when I got it along with a Holley 3310. The 3310 is a 780cfm with a vacuum secondary.

I have also run the Shelby version of the Blue Thunder (the original manifold the Blue Thunder is copied from) an Edelbrock Torker and the Ford Motorsport A341 version of the Torker.

I know that you could go with more cam than this for one thing. That one will go to 7000 with the right valve springs and anti-pump up lifters but in reality is pretty much done by 6,000 rpm.

The F351 claim to fame, is the old Edelbrock offering of "a light weight aluminum intake vs. the factory iron intake" and another 10hp over that.

Does that mean it is a "bottle neck"? Yes if you are looking for more than basically a 300hp '70 4v 351c + 10hp?


There are a bunch of intakes available for you to choose from now as well as camshafts that will give you considerably more than that. This engine is quite capable of around 500 and very easy to bring into the 400 to 450 range with just a few changes.

A much simpler solution though at the moment for you would be to simply change the carb to a Holley 4776, 600cfm double pumper.

That right there will crispen up what you have without seriously tearing into the engine, especially considering that in a Pantera you have to go through this entire consideration of intake manifold heights and what will fit under the screen cover. That for many becomes an academic evaluation that they don't want to have to think about.

All that information is available though, but many other choices are going to involve some internal engine work and some money.

The limitations of the 4776 matches better those of the F351 and your existing camshaft and it will be crisp and responsive.

There is no reason that you have to run without a choke on the carb. Holley sells an automatic conversion kit for it that works very well.


Sometimes lack of a choke will kill a lot of the low end until the engine gets hot. Certainly on a 4779 it will.

My impression of the Shelby intake was that it runs a lot like the F351 Edelbrock. It has a little more upper rpm potential above 6000 rpm though. In fact the Edelbrock might be noticibly crisper under 3000?

I think the Shelby/Blue Thunder is a combination manifold built in the late 60s to accommodate cars with both automatic transmissions and manual and as a result the manual trans cars suffer for it.

Dan Jones did dyno test the Blue Thunder and found that it has four good runners and four "bad ones" (his quote, not mine). With internal porting of it, it can be made to work like you expected it to, but internal porting of a 180 manifold is not for a novice of amateur at all.


I personally found that the Edelbrock Torker with a 4779 ran best for me.

I can't argue that it was a little flat up to about 3,000 rpm but then again I never had to drive this combination as an everyday car in traffic so my perspective may be tainted in that sense.

I was running more camshaft than you so without a dyno it is hard to determine if it was the manifold or cam or the combination?