Silver95bird
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- Sep 5, 2016
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I've been looking into the intake options for the 5.4l swap. There's the ever popular pi intake with adapter plates, the hps 5.4 hardballer, the 4.6 hardballer with adapters, the lightning lower... Oh yeah, there's also the intake the engines come with. Started looking at what people get out of each combination, and I'm seeing somewhat of a trend. All of the car intakes seem to be roughly copies of the pi, with varying runner lengths. The cross sections all appear roughly the same. A pi with adapter plates tops out around what, 5000rpms/250hp? N/a of course. Redneck had a post that the 4.6 hps with adapters pulled to 6100. I'm going to assume that the 4.6 hps with adapters isn't that different from the 5.4 hps without the adapters. They're just a lower profile for hood clearance. Not too shabby, honestly. I read a post that blak tried a lightning lower and it ran like poop below 5000rpms. So 3" of manifold is too short, and the hps is like 9"? The truck intake is a long runner intake, maybe 15" if I had to guess. I think by removing the lower plenum from the old aluminum intake 5.4 I have, that I could knock out the connecting walls between the runners, effectively turning runner space into plenum volume. Now take the aluminum section and cut the dividers back a bit, and knife edge them, giving a nice wide taper at their ends. I think the lack of taper makes a big difference in restricted intake engines like the modulars. The height I don't think is as big a problem as people make it out to be. Don't forget the adapters add an inch and probably 3/16 to the height of a pi manifold, plus the injector problems and the added runner lengths. A pi manifold with adapters is probably as long as the truck intake! Has anyone ever tried porting the truck intake? It could be shortened to probably something approaching the 5.4 hardballer length, and without the sharp 90* angle the car intakes have. Anyone? Beuller? Beuller?