Sean,I hope you're not getting defensive because of what I wrote. I am by no means an expert intake manifold designer,my questions were just to try and understand the idea behind the way Mark designed his intake,and try to pick his brain,so if I was to try and take on a task this advanced i would have a better clue on what to do. Mark's answer may of been short,but it was to the point,and helped me understand his thinking why he made it this way.And by all means,I am not knocking it,I think it is well thought out,and looks great! (Very professional) As for other custom intakes having the V-shape on the bottom of the plenum, the customs have been out of my price range,so I don't have much experience with them. I would buy a TIG welder before I forked over 3K for an intake.LOL And that is basically why I had the questions,I'm thinking of buying a TIG welder,and may be building an intake myself in the near future,have to start the research some where.(and I'm sure my first one will be NOWHERE close to being as nice as the Burton X-Factor,if I do make one)
You and me both on the Tig! How cheap of a tig can you buy and still be able to make intakes and such? I need to start looking. Last time I tried it was around $2000 for a used professional one but I couldn't afford that.
Sean, I wasn't trying to knock the manifold at all, I was just wondering how well it worked. When I originally replied to the thread I did not know about Mark having had a stroke and that he would not be making any more X-Factors, so I was interested in what the dyno numbers were because I may have wanted one in the future. Mark did an excellent job on it.
I found a good TIG for right at $1500 including the pedal and tank. I already had a usable stinger so that's an extra couple bills but ebay occasionally has a deal. I ended up with an old ESAB 380, a good heavy industrial machine that is made for constant usage. It had a few teething problems as it had sat for a while but I bought it from WeldPlus, a local supplier and they had no problem with helping make it right. Most consumers don't know anything about ESAB so the price was right, and it came with the stitch and spot modules installed. May never use those but they're there. It pays to shop around. Several years back there was an auction of about 40 TIG welders as a lot and I considered bidding but it never happened. Could have bought a very old basic unit for around $500 but you have to have a foot pedal to do any good, and the more control for things like penetration, frequency and such the better. HF start is very helpful especially for the beginner. Don't go too light on your stinger. I know 3/32" electrodes have become more common but it's hard to beat the old 1/8" standard for general all around use. You can melt the end right off those smaller electrodes and not even know you are doing it. A water cooled stinger is a wonderful thing. And worst case, you can run it with a water hose. I picked up a chiller for about a hundred bucks. Your manifold should be designed to enhance what you want from your engine. In my case that meant long flat runners and a very large plenum, but this is an intercooled Roots style blower intake for street use and daily driving so it's anything but typical. The TIG welder gives you the chance to build an intake but that is a very long way from giving you the ability. The rest of it is up to you. By the time you are done, that 2-3K for a custom might look cheap. OTOH, if you develop the skills successfully, that intake will only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you will use that welder for. Another tip: Assuming you use 6000 series material you will be using either 5000 or 4000 series filler rod. Do not attempt to weld 6000 without a filler. It will crack. Two things to remember. Get a good helmet with an adjustable tint auto lens, and light your work area with good high powered halogens located behind you. You can't weld what you can't see. Jim
Yep, good info. Design is part of the deal, being able to weld right is another. Sorry if I came off a little ticked before, just annoyed that it never worked out, especially now, lol. I like the ceriated(?) tungsten, straight AC, pure argon, and BLOW the juice to it. If you take too long get on with it, you get a lot of heat soak. Just give it some time to get warm to avoid cracks. Dip the tungsten as often as possible so you can get really good at grinding it. Yes, that was a joke. Use a fixture of some sort and it will not warp much. Plan your welds so you move around not to get to much heat in one area too fast. Let it cool often, but not get cold. It takes FOREVER. You'll be so tick of TIG you won't want to look at it for a month.:grin:
Mark.. I wish you a speedy recovery and I want to thank you for helping build what I guess is a pretty unique car. I was never the best candidate to take on this project and I hope I didn't give you some bad press. I had many failures along the way due to my inexperience, ineptness, and ignorance (the three Is??) And now I have it all tuned and working right and have a MAJOR (about as major as it gets) driveline failure.. Oh well.. Onward.. The Dr Jeckyl, My Hyde car car is a ton of fun to drive..
No worries, I know you were just interested in learning more about how the intake performs.... Some day I might have a back to back test done but likely not, just going to make it work and prove it works well.... With all this welding talk, all the more reason to find a Poston intake and mod it as a single plane....
I've made the offer before and I wanted to make it again here. If anyone is interested in borrowing my Burton single plane intake for testing, you are more than welcome. Wether it be to get measurements, a dyno test, track test etc. Hell, if you want to borrow it for your racing season that is perfectly fine by me. Only thing required is that you pay for shipping both ways and give me a good idea how long you want to borrow it. My 350 is a few years out from being built so I'm in no hurry to have it back, but I'm not willing to permanently loan it out either. PM me if interested. Keep in mind this isn't for sell.... unless Cason wants it back in which case it's his for exaclty what I gave to him for it. I'm not home often so if anyone wants to take me up on this offer understand I cannot ship this out right away.
Sorry for the off topic post, Aubrey if you could clear your PM box I had a question for you about the f250 you have in your sig. Thanks:TU:
No the intake Aubrey has is one Mark Burton built it wassteel, fit under a stock hood and was a lot like this one here:<o></o> <o></o> <o></o> <o></o> Or just buy a 340 intake, cut it up, mill some plates, and JB weld it all together. No welding required. This is one that GS Johnny made:<o></o> <o></o> <o></o> <o></o> <o></o> <o></o> <o></o> <o></o> <o></o>
I can find pics of mine here on the board later. I don't have pics, but it's been posted before. It is an early all steel intake built by Mark Burton. I'm not home at the moment (and won't be till the summer) but if you are truly interested in borrowing it, I can get a rough quote. Won't be able to ship it till July though.
I hope I have it running before that but if you tell me the thread I will look for it. The car I was racing needs a freshen up but it might have to be bored so the owner needs to make some desicions before I do anything to it. I was looking at maybe buying that 455 for 1,900 on here but the owner will have to come up with most of the money if I pull his engine out. I'm still working on the machine work for the 350, wondering where to take it, and so on.
is the 340-360 intake the only one close to working on a 350 I thought I heard the Pontiac intake was close too
