www.neons.org

Lol, no it didn't get buried, I just don't have an intelligent answer for you, so I didn't say anything.

If it's for forced induction, as long as you can get balanced airflow to all cylinders, you're doing well. It's all about maintaining good airspeed entering into the engine. Look at how simple the intake manifold is for the GM ecotec drag cars. Its a simple log with a big plenum. They made the runners long enough to get decent directional flow, meaning the air is moving in the right direction when it gets to the port. Nothing exotic. That's why so many different homegrown designs can yield decent results. Most shops don't even bother with tapered runners, unless its a specific intake manifold business like Wilson or Hogan. Those shops have the experience of working with N/A applications to know what will work.
The advice I was given, was to either make a big plenum to help even out flow, or to optimize the flow to keep plenum volume down. A smaller plenum reacts to throttle position quicker, but is more sensitive to runner airflow. My new manifold was designed with the help of people far more experienced than me. I won't ever claim to be a brainiac, but I know the right people to ask, lol.
There is a distinct design difference to a manifold for all-around use, or for specific use, like drag racing, or road course racing. For a drag race engine like mine, it just needs to be balanced at WOT/full boost. The runner length can vary by an inch, and you wouldn't notice the difference. When you're talking about a FI engine, and 1000+ HP, you're not looking for an extra 3-4 HP, you look for big gains. My current manifold has a huge plenum, but I kept the runners long, to give me some more low-end torque for street driving. It works great as a good all-round manifold, but the stock runners limit the amount of air the engine can consume. I needed lots of boost to make HP with it. The one I'm making now, should give around a 20% increase in flow at high rpm, big boost levels. I'll get more air into the engine, instead of keeping it in the plenum. I'm trying to match the manifold to the power I want to make. My end goal, is to make the intake/cyl head/exhaust so efficient, that I can max out the big turbo I want to put on there, lol. I have always tried to match the components together for the power level/ performance level I was working with, so even though a manifold like this would probably be a nice improvement over a stock Neon manifold, I don't think it would any better than a lesser, simpler version at lower power levels, like a log manifold.

I had another idea that a different version of this would be a perfect manifold for individual throttle bodies.

I hate to disagree, but to me this seems like a pretty intelligent answer, thanks! ! !

Got any thoughts on how to do a decent side intake that would work okay with the stock positioning of the starter motor and radiator with factory fan? I'm thinking of leaving this stock runners a bit long, and having them attach to a largish plenum in the area of the plenum farthest from the side of the block, with the TB aiming into a large volume of the plenum inboard of the area where the runners connect to the plenum. I was thinking that avoiding the effect of having the forced air blowing straight across the runner openings might be nice. . . I don't suppose that description effectively conveys the picture I have in my head though.

Thanks again!

Thad

This is as far as I got before turkey day. Got the tapered runners cut. I was gonna have all day on friday to work on it some more, but I popped my knee pretty bad Thanksgiving morning. GEE, THANKS!
Now I get to have some arthroscopic surgery, and some time off work, so I won't get to play with this any more until after the holidays.

SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICKKKKK!!!!!!

Hope your knee is alright. Hope all goes well.

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and get that knee taken care of. It sucks having knee problems i know even at 22, i had a hockey accident back in middle school.

That's going to be a VERY pretty manifold. . . . It can never go on MY car!

I have this one for sale now. I won't need it any longer. Been hanging on to it just in case.

This project is sick!!! I would like to do a similar mount setup on my srt 4, i don't like how it sits and it would be nice to have it like yours. Again everything looks top notch, I actually talked to you some on srtforums.

Thanks! Just wait til I get it on the pavement again. Never understood why the srt guys want to go through all the trouble of putting on an Avenger head, when you could put the largest turbo you could ever use in the correct spot. Good luck with your project as well.

Len the new intake is sweet! I love the built in velocity stacks that was one of the main reason I did the "hybrid" Indy deal because I really fell in love with the top half of that manifold. Sorry to hear about your knee. Get well soon. I can't wait till your front end is done! I know you can't either. It should turn out pretty awesome!

LenAyala you have a PM sir.

Looks amazing as always Len.

very nice!, i landed on my knee one time on asphault after jumping an unstable ramp with my bike. It was locked up for a little over a month. Never went to the doctor feels fine today tho

Ahhhhhh.......... I love a good intake. Looking sweet Len!! Some day I would like to remake mine right from the flange. Keep it up, I'm looking forward to the finished product.

Oohhh! Sacrilege! Your intake is a sight to behold.

Yea, that will be nasty on the streets and a nice sleeper. Yea, I looked into DCR avenger head setup and I just didn't see it being cost effective. What compression ratio are you going with? Thanks I'll need it, I'm about to order my wiseco 10:1 pistons and crower 7/16 bolt rods.

You intake manifold is a tried and true design for a boosted application.
Twins Turbo
Greddy
Vielside
Random Guy
Thats just what I found in about 5 minutes....

Oh good lord, I think I just wet myself (or something. . . ) over this:



And that "Random Guy" one linked above looks like that plenum could probably be used in a Neon application. Doesn't it? I think that might be a plenum from a "Full-Race copy" intake manifold on eBay. I'll have to look around and see if I could get my hands on one of those cheap and scavenge the plenum off of it for my use.

????

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pXfHLUlZf4


just add "Thad saw a bunch of pretty intakes and..."

Thank you! ! ! That is one of the funniest things EVER! ! ! ! Made my whole day I think (even more than that intake).

any updates?

KNEE?
TIME OFF WORK??
AFTER THE HOLIDAYS?? lol.

I actually had some time to work on my car while I was recovering from knee surgery. . . . It was nice.

That is the TB that I run on the drag evo. It's a piece of art

Hey, I don't put pics of Neons on your evo project log do I?

Hey now! What were the conditions of me selling you that tail light and battery cut switch?!? You were supposed to do some MONSTER burnouts for me this season

Got the flange cut to fit the runners today. I'm gonna have these pieces welded together before I continue machining. Super nice transitions, and I even continued the taper into the flange.

Wow. Should I feel funny to be aroused by some metal?

That's garbage Len, someone of your experience should be ashamed!


Send it to me, I think I can salvage it for my car.

Hi Len,

You have a really nice project going.

I cannot wait to see some dyno sheets and/or drag runs.

Do you still intend to use a GT4094R? From what I see, the 77mm turbine might be a little small for the compressor Exducer size. Are you considering a S372? I know you were thinking buying one that was forsale.

If I were to do it again (manifolds, piping and all), I would probably go for an S372 (now that I am upgrading the engine internals to allow more RPM).

Chris

Got it welded! Whew, now most of the hard stuff is done, and its time for the fun stuff.




Here you can see what I did with the water neck. I'm gonna rotate the thermostat housing a little to clear the plenum.

Added injector and fuel rail bosses.

Those aren't fuel injectors, those are toilet plungers. ;)

Really sexy stuff... I wish I had your talent and access to a machine shop...

I probably need not to say it, but the fastest cars are nevers the ones that owners pay to get built by others, but actually the ones the owner is the main builder, like you.

I have a few tech questions:

Have you tuned the runner length? (Sorry, I do not remember all 26 pages of the log...) It is often not really neccessary with a turbocharged car (and difficult to tune because of the variable air density).

From what I remember, cam duration and timing has a lot to do when tuning the runner lenght.

Perhaps, if you tuned at the lower end of the boost onset, it would help to spool a little faster by increasing the engine VE in that rpm range.Anyway, once the turbo is spooled, you can just tune adjust boost by rpm with some hi-tech boost controller.

I also believe you do not want too short of a runner for 2 reasons:
- keep all the fuel injected by that runners injector in this runner at at all rpm ranges
- at low load /low rpm, not allow the burnt crap escaping from the intake valve to exit the runner and contaminate the plenum, making the one cylinder farther from the TB to get all the crap from the 3 other...

It would explain why mine runs like crap at idle, and cyl. #4 spark plug gets dirty when idling.

What do you think?

I got the advice for my manifold design from a guy that designs racing manifolds for a living. The runner length came from a couple different aspects. The 1st was to make sure I was getting a certain volume of air into each runner, 2nd, to get that air to increase velocity when it gets to the port and injector. If the runner is too short, it doesn't have enough taper differential. Might as well be straight then. It also serves to add lower rpm torque, but that really won't come into the performance equation for a race engine. The runner length is not as important on this motor as it would be for a n/a motor, because it'll be force-fed with pressurized air. The quantity of air I can force into each cylinder is the design objective.

I had a short runner manifold long time ago on the black car, and it was still much better than the stock one, but I didn't have the knowledge to know whether that manifold was a good design or not. It was better than what I had, and that was good enough.

You'll see some more of my friends design influence when I get the plenum welded on.

speaking of your black car, get this one done so Hot Rod can do another article!

hey len did moran tell you how far the tip of the injector should sit into the runner? looks like it isnt in the runner as much as he originally designed them to be.

It's farther into the runners than any of the V8 manifolds I've seen. These injectors were made longer because its so hard to get a regular injector to get close to the runner on a V8. Look at how long the injector bosses are on most of the V8 sheetmetal intake manifolds. The body of this injector is bigger as well, and that makes it even harder to get it deeper. There's no need to have the injector tip any farther into the runner than what I have. It just gets in the way at that point. I still have to open up the injector holes some more after the bosses get welded on. Trust me that the injector placement has been optimized for this cylinder head.

glad to see that it's coming along That manifold and injectors look sick.