porting the exit ports should get you a decent gain, im sure 5 HP is well with in reach. Its not really that much of a chore, take the blower off, take the 3 bolts that hold the alternator on, take the manifold off.

But really if your going to do something to the manifold, just go all the way. And no the most restrictive part is the laminova cores.

 

You dont need to remove the alternator to take the manifold off.

 

Any updates to this???

 

ya i wanna see whats going on

 

updates. no pictures of it right now, but i have cut off the back side to the intake manifold and am working on smoothing everything out in there. Been kinda busy lately so work has slowed down some...

This weekend i plan on putting some serious time into it, and hopefully finishing off the polishing job. Ill update it then.

 

Ok i have finished porting and polishing the inside, i did port the vents some, not more than 2 MM at most. I more so just tried to open up the ends since they are alot smaller than the middle. I didnt do the ports yet because i figure i will wait till i get head work done so they can be professionaly port matched. I am going to get it welded back together sometime this week hopefully.

The pictures

 

lOOKS nice. Did you hit the ports on the head end? I can't quite tell.

 

very shiny

 

can we get a pic with the cores installed? please.

 

no i didnt, ill have that done professionally when the head gets ported and polished so that they are port mached perfectly.

maybe, but why do you need that? Only reason i say maybe is because the cores are at my parents house and its a bit of a drive to get there.

 

Did you measure the slot width, before and after porting??
That would give some indication what can be gained here...

 

before they are said to be 15MM, but they are so uneven its really hard to say. I havent measure them afterwards i more so judged the size and eveness by the tool size i was using. I used a Dremel bit with the sand paper tube on the end. It seemed to make an almost perfect fit in that it increased the width by a few MMs on each side and allowed for very precise control over even ness. Afterwards i sanded them round and smooth which resulted in ends still slightly tapered, but much closer to the size of the middle which was the widest section.

 

My buddy has the intake manifold and is going to be welding it together, i should have it back by next week. Hopefully monday or so i will have everything installed.

 

ok, I'm just trying to understand the airflow of this manifold as I'm realizing just how SHITTY it really is. It looks as if the supercharger pushes the air in and then the air moves downward around a really sharp angle into a bigger area in front of the laminovas, once through the laminovas, it has to move back up at another hard angle to go through the runners into the head. Did I get that right? If so, that's rediculous, and I will be going ahead and cutting my IM apart when I get back from this deployment to try and make it more effecient. Can anyone make a CAD drawing or make some sort of illustration to better show me how the airflow moves?

 

You got it about right... except there are no runners in the stock IM. It's pretty much plenum straight out the ports, and into the head.
And as far as making it more efficient... the stocker is almost beyond repair. You can try to do what Jayson is doing, and do a P&P... but that's about it.

 

New question, where the supercharger pushes the air into the manifold, can you just get rid of that stupid wall that the air has to take a sharp angle around to get to the laminova cores? If so, why hasn't anyone done that? That way you get rid of that sharp angle so that the air can move straight to the laminova cores and take care of business.

 

The other side of that wall is the exit to the head. If you cut it out and move it, the restriction moves to the other side of the IM. The only possible thing to do, is to cut and move the laminovas down, and make that edge less steep.

 

How good do the laminovas actually do at cooling?

 

Excellent... as long as you don't over flow them.
The Honda guys that use the LHT intercooler for the JRSC claim that it cools the charge very well. However, they don't push too much flow, and keep the SC int eh efficiency range.

 

That sounds like a lot of ingenuity that you could mess up easily. What about just grinding an much off that wall so that there is less of a hard angle, On BOTH sides. That's possible right?

 

It is possible. I'd be concerned about the wall thickness, but being cast, I assume there is a good amount of beef there to work with.

 

Omega, you don't think going 16mm all the way across the slits is too much do you? That should show a nice gain in flow but not overflow the laminova cores.

well, that looks kinda like what -jayson- was doing. I may take a bit more off though. We'll see. I'll have to find a good welder before I dive into this.

 

After the last set of tests on the ported IM, I came to a few conclusions;
Porting size greatly depends on pulley size. Smaller pulley = more heat. Bigger ports = less cooling time.

I wouldn't recommend going past 16mm for too many applications. In your case, on the stock pulley with a lot of cooling mods, you could probably get away with a bit bigger.... but again, I don't suggest it.

 

I'm going to be using a 2.9 pulley, stock pulley no more once I get back from my deployment. You don't think 16mm will be too much do you? that's only 1mm bigger right? or is it 12mm stock? I just basically want to get rid of the tapering that those slits do on the ends and make it the same width all the way across.

 

I think the stocker I hacked up was 14mm in the middle, tapering off to 11-12mm on the edges.
IIRC, Opcon recommends 15mm for optimum operation. Considering that heat is our biggest enemy in the modding game, 16mm would be plenty.

I did a test up to 18mm, and it sacrificed a bit of cooling. I wouldn't recommend an 18mm for anything smaller than a stage 2.