Charlie's intake

All the oily, spinning bits

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Old Colt
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Charlie's intake

Post by Old Colt »

So that I do not thread jack on what Bill is working on I will bring this up separately.
Here are a few pics of an intake I have been picking away at.
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As you can see this is not finished yet. I personally have no interest in 1/4 mile stuff, I make parts that will get a car into an out of corners therefore my intakes do not have little stubby tubes or big boxy plenums.
Bill Hincher
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Post by Bill Hincher »




BEAUTIFUL! WOW!

your right about the design old Colt ( if in fact that is your real name )

I spend all my time looking for torque not horse power, it's torque that pulls you out of mid corner and into the front stretch, horsepower only pulls at the end of the stretch.

On the street, after 400HP its a waste of time, build in your torque before 4500 RPM and thats all you need

VERY,VERY, NICE WORK!
DJpowerHaus
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Post by DJpowerHaus »

Bill Hincher wrote:
it's torque that pulls you out of mid corner and into the front stretch, horsepower only pulls at the end of the stretch.
Wow.. only 1 gear for the whole front stretch. That's pretty wild :-D


That manifold looks nice!!!
Last edited by DJpowerHaus on Mon Dec 04, 2006 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Getting the engine bolted in is about 10% of the way there.
The next 80% can go quickly with help and skill.
That last 10% takes about as long as the 90% that came before it.
Eric
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Post by Eric »

That's sweet! Nice website, I've browsed it before after seeing your posts on msefi.com. Is that intake for the blue Evo III? I'm in the process of building my exhaust system and I am going to have to see if I can get the tubing to run side-by-side with the driveshaft, looks nice.
Bill Hincher
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Post by Bill Hincher »



Yeah, dJ

If you do it right, its one gear

Imagine being on a motorcycle, on a dirt track, with 10 guys right on your ass, in the appex of a corner @ 90 mph........and shifting up to the next gear, under full throttle :D Now THAT is the ultimate EXTREME SPORT!

You only do that in the first lap, by the way, on the start and after that you leave it in 5th so you don't risk a bad shift or lock up the engine with over rev.

But I stand by what I said, there is no sense in building speed in a street car, just torque, when you can leave the light hard, nobody stays with you, so what do you need high end for?
Old Colt
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Post by Old Colt »

Thank you guys,
Bill, I figured this would be of interest to you. This design lends itself to casting very nicely and then fabricate the upper section for each application.
The lower section could be done with different cores depending which generation engine it were for.
When I moved up to Vermont 9 years ago from Conn. I left behind the ease of doing cast products.

Matt, I have been building intake and exhaust components for a few decades now. I have had a chance to do development with a few engines which was interesting since there are some real interesting harmonics involved. I cringe when I see box type plenums, the flat surfaces just sing. They can be easy to build but are horrible on the torque and fuel curve. Even a round straight plenum can have drastic affects on cylinder balance. These affects I learned back in the Weber days when the effect called "multi carbing" was a big thing to work around. It is when the air would travel more than once up and down a throat. Harder to see in the injection era since dry manifolds mask these issues.
So to answer part of your question this manifold is designed by gut feeling. It still has a flow diverter at the inlet to be built that take the mass of the air down the edges to reduce the suction/ bypassing of the first and second cylinder. I have worked with this on Porches with good results, on my second pass that is.
This manifold obviously is far from proven.

Eric, Yes this manifold is slated for the Evo III swap.
I am also doing a sister car to that one with less emphasis on weight. That car was very successful in that regard since it is well under 2400 lbs in road trim and will be lighter still when this intake and the tubular front subframe are installed.
There is a bunch of room under the Mirages for the exhaust, if you have worked with a GVR4 you will be amazed how much more room there is under these little cars.
Ahh, I forgot a shot at the insides, The tubes are the water injection bits without there nozzles.
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Last edited by Old Colt on Mon Dec 04, 2006 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DJpowerHaus
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Post by DJpowerHaus »

I've gone over your cardomain sites and wow. Amazing work over the years. I'd love to just sit and read stories from when you were racing that Colt back in the day. What kinds of cool aftermarket parts have been available over the year for the Colts and even for the Starion. What suspension do you have on that Starion? I just want to ask you a million questions.

1 Question is.. where can I get early 70s Colt?
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Getting the engine bolted in is about 10% of the way there.
The next 80% can go quickly with help and skill.
That last 10% takes about as long as the 90% that came before it.
Old Colt
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Post by Old Colt »

A few other intakes to look at, One again not done. This is one of my many Starions, sure wish I could play all day and get it done.
This is obviously not a RWD swap but of interest nonetheless.

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Now this one is kind of a RWD swap, but actually a BEC. Bike engined car.
This intake is proven, not perfect but gives a very wide powerband.
This is an example of a dropped floor and works best with the stacks that are in the intake above.
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DJ, I will be writing some about the early Colts.
My Starion rides on Advance Design Double adjustables in my own housings.
TruckA
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Post by TruckA »

That is some really nice work. Looks good!
Bill Hincher
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Post by Bill Hincher »



Hey Charlie,
Would you be kind enough to tell us how you use the water injection to your advantage? how you regulate it and how much you use it?
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Post by Robert Venable »

I have a few questions for you Colt:

1. Are you gonna use the butter flys in the runners to tune the intake(like for air speed and volume) or will this be your only "throttle body" so to say?
2. What difference is made when you use a dropped floor intake? And why do you have the runners at different heights in the intake?
3. DO you make the "air horns" or buy them? Is so, who sells this?
1990 MIGHTY MAX, REG CAB,
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Post by Old Colt »

Hi guys, I have a concrete pour today, I will get back to answers later.
Old Colt
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Post by Old Colt »

Hi Robert,
The butterflies are the throttles. In all of these manifolds the plenum is before the throttles so they remain under pressure during a throttle lift. This is not the easy way to build but they drive better.

The dropped floor in the plenum is used for a few reasons. one being a space issue. To get the stack length needed for tuning it can be easy to run out of room and keep enough space above the runners.
In order to keep control over the velocity of air within the plenum we drop the floor and let the runners draw there air from under the stacks rather that above them.
Some will say that this is done for plenum volume, but with a boosted dry plenum this is not the issue. A wet manifold is another issue.

A plenum with a dropped floor prefers the full radius stacks as in the Starion manifold above. The Busa manifold is compromised a bit with the stacks used but it performs well. Time a sourcing was an issue here.
The varied stack length in the Busa is used to widen the torque curve. In this application the engine produces 155 Lbs at 7500 rpm, but it makes over 120 Lbs from 3700 to 10,500. I can pull out of turns an any of 4 gears and exceed .85 G acceleration. Granted it will pull over 1G in third gear alone as well as .85 in sixth.

The Busa is also mapped with different ignition curves for the varied stack lengths.

I use four different sources for the stacks and now am spinning my own when need be. I also have been press forming transitions as well as hand forming some tubes. Here is a tapered turbo outlet in a GVR4.
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Post by Bill Hincher »



Hi Charlie,

I like how your mind works >;o)

on the dyno tests I have run, the individual runner/throtle plate has a very irradic hp/torque trend at high RPM's, where as the large plenum/short tapered intake runners have a smooth long transition
I wondered if, under street usage, a single two stage throttle body would be the correct design, if a radical cam profile was used.
I can get the power figures where I want them but I am having trouble with the air speed at the throttle body dropping below 300 ft per second and I want to aviod low speed flat spots

Bill
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Post by Old Colt »

Good comments Bill,
I think what you are seeing is that the short runner is above the tuning range so it is not showing any affects. Either positive of negative. And since it is tapered the cylinder filling is good so power is there. A big benefit of boosted intakes is forcing the cylinders to fill.
Now if we look at getting the runners to a proper tune we can also get affects of being out of tune, be it secondary resonance or just not being right. And coupled to a boosted intake, when it is wrong it really is wrong due to the increased density. A tuned intake as well as exhaust can give a nice sweet spot, but if that tuned spot is not near what the engine is asking for it is a sour spot.

So if one of the short runner intakes was made in the 11 to 13 range with the engine telling you the actual length you would see a good gain at the torque peak but as you have seen it can give you the fits when it is wrong.

What size throttle are you having the drop off in? I am going to guess 70mm or larger?
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