I need a SBC intake manifold - Damage/EFI/carb/condition doesn't matter, just needs to have/be:

1) SBC dist hole
2) aluminum
3) cheap

Thanks!
Alan 831 427-3296 PST evenings

Got a ZZ4 GMPP intake. Good shape, $50 plus shipping.

any idea what shipping would be to northern ca? have not shipped from/to Canada before. Alan posted this for my car.

thx!

Hmmm...
I can ship it from Sumas WA 98295 via UPS or Fedex, but no idea what it will cost. I'm only a few minutes north of the border so no big deal to send it to you (although we just got a freak snowfall today that will make that a little tougher for a while. Or I can ship from Canada too I guess.
Larry Bell

Thanks! It looks like I've found one locally for free

What kind of project are you scheming up here?

Operation Delete Opti..... converting to dual synch distributor for cam and crank position signals and therefore need old style manifold to mate with LT1 manifold to provide the distributor mounting point. Alan's thinking it'd be easiest to cut out the mounting point and weld it to the LT1 Manifold rather than machining the LT1 to fit the distributor....

You should have it Friday Alan!

Thx Julie!

No problemo, just paying it forward!

What if it warps?

Have you seen http://www.lt1intake.com/ ?

I might be able to get by with a hole saw and a drum sander if it was for a street car, but for a 8000 rpm race motor the hole has to be perfectly located. It's an odd size hole, and at a slight angle to horizontal. I figure If I start with the proper hole, my task is to simply put it in the proper place. I'm thinking make a template for a V notch out of each manifold on the band saw, with the donor piece a little oversize. Grind the donor hole to fit, weld in place. Warping will be minimized by bolting the manifold to a block, using minimum heat, lotsa tacks, and short welds. The margin that is affected is sealed with RTV anyway, so a minor offset will not matter. Warping of the gasket seating surface would not be good (GTP ported intake) but I think it would take abuse to affect them. I might just do a test run with the LT1 patch onto the 305 manifold.

How does that help you align things anyways? It is only going to be as precise as your cut(s), and a band saw isn't exactly precise.

Just my opinion, but if you are going to take it to that extent I'd think your time/money would be better spent just giving the manifolds to a machinist and saying "copy this onto this". Weld a piece of 1/4" flat stock on the top so they have some material to machine the 5 deg angle into. I don't think that would distort near as much as cutting a whole chunk out and welding in a new piece. We do quite a bit of this with early mock-ups and prototypes on die cast gear boxes, so I'm not exactly talking out my ass here.

Maybe I don't fully understand how and where you are cutting and welding.

Does the lt1 have the hole in the lifter valley the distributor contacts the cam?

The other way is to do it the lt1intake.com style by drilling a hole with a hole saw and epoxying the 5 deg spacer onto the manifold. I was looking at doing this before and I admit that I didn't feel great about it, but they seem to have some success. Their bracket that they use as a template seems Mickey Mouse IMO.

LT1 uses the same cam driven oil pump as an SBC. Since there is no distributor to drive the oil pump, there is an oil pump drive that is the lower half of a distributor to drive the oil pump. With the proper hole in the intake, a regular distributor will drop into place.

I've seen some guys do a similar opti delete with this method, but the opti still had to be in place to deliver the cam position signal. The distributor just distributed the spark instead of using the opti cap and rotor to do it.

Do you have the appropriate sensor to feed the computer to simulate the optical signal?

Yes, the distributor we'll use is a "dual synch" distributor which provides the FAST computer 2 separate signals, one for cam position, one for crank position. Technically you don't need the Cam position sensor with the FAST computer if you want to run bank to bank but most tuners seem to prefer sequential and seems while we're at it we might as well do it right. Anyway, this allows you to get rid of the opti entirely. I've personally never had a single opti issue but I consider myself extremely lucky and not sure how much I trust them on a full race set-up. I really don't enjoy removing my crank pulley and water pump every time you need to do something opti related.

One of my big concerns is the hole size - I measured it as some oddball in between size that doesn't match any hole saw - that would force me to a machine shop, and all of the local machine shops I've dealt with want to rape me or hold up my project indefinitely. Besides, a hole saw leaves a very coarse, sometimes oval hole.

So my motivation to graft an existing, proper sized hole onto the LT1 manifold. Thanks for your advise re warpage, when I get everything in hand (dist shipped today, Eric) I'll see if there is a less invasive way to merge the hole. The LT1 manifold is quite low and flat there, while the TPI manifolds I've looked at are humped up, perhps placing the hole above the plane of the LT1 piece. Maybe I can holesaw an oversize opening, then drop the hole on it and weld. I would want some weld on it, but could see doing 3 heavy tacks, for example, and finishing the rest of the closure with epoxy.

Also, I plan to weld up the EGR ports, and may have to remove part of the EGR boss to clear the body of the dist.

Oh, you're running a FAST, not a stock computer, that would explain it.

The machinist I go to has Lt1, ls1, tpi, and buick V6 parts laying all over his shop. He told me once that converted a lt1 intake over to a a Gen I before. He's the guy we go to when we need our cut and weld housings made, so I assume that this is how he did it for the intake too. He even has a flow bench and has made sheet metal intakes.

If you are interested I can ask he what he'd want to do this. If you want to do the welding and let him do the machining or whatever, I'm sure he can work with you. If you don't like the price or aren't interested or whatever, no hard feelings. It doesn't hurt to ask.

Piece of cake, why didn't GM do it this way? ;-)



Big thanks to Jules and Stan for the assistance!

Nice usage of this rule:


Got about a 1 lb weight savings too?

With the windshield installed would you still have reasonable access? Or are you going to section out a piece of the cowl and this is just a progress shot?

Chris

Cowl has a 6" hole directly above the dist. I will fab a sealed cover that will be removable with the windshield in place for servicing wires/cap/rotor without pulling the windshield. The dist MIGHT come out, too, but worst case the Lexan windshield will be removable in about 5min.


I was not nuts about cutting the holes in the cowl, since it is structural, but they just missed the flange to the firewall, and the internal bulkhead, so I'm calling it OK. I considered welding a cylinder in there to connect the top and bottom holes, but with the motor in there it would be a PITA for little effect.

Looking good. I saw the hole in the dash, but wasn't sure how much clearance you would have to the windshield. Heck I forgot all about the cowl/windshield/motor relationship in the earlier posts, until I saw the pics. Then I was like uh oh...."Houston we have a problem".

Could you run on of these? http://www.msdignition.com/Products/Distri...istributor.aspx
Or is there some other concern at play specific to the LT1/Opti?

I was interested in the whole conversion from opti to traditional distributor. My dad has stone stock 93Z28 and I am waiting for that to crap out and tackle that job. I don't think he'd go for this conversion though.

The crab dist may not fully solve the vertical clearance problem, and would certainly create a horizontal clearance issue to to the fuel rails and EGR bosses. Both would be solveable with some fab work, but if it's a street car you have the added fab of a remote mounted EGR valve, if required for local smog. Still, the dist may not come out without a hole at least in the bottom of the cowl, and it would need to be a larger hole, so starts to impact the firewall and internal bulkhead, and possibly center wiper arms. No hole = probably a motor pull to R&R dist or intake.

The 93 is batch fire so you only need one sync signal, electrically it could probably be done with a conventional dist.

This tall dist is a FAST specific with cam and crank position outputs for sequential fire, and the physical size and shape worked ideally for this app: race car with Lexan made the cowl hole a no brainer.