Quote:
Originally Posted by bullitt5897
Kyle, what is stillens take on the intake manifold pressure? As a N/A vehicle of course the manifold was not purpose built for FI. I know GTM has already pushed the intake manifold psi into the mid teens and made over 600rwhp... What is stillen's stance on intake manifold performance and capabilities?
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There is no doubt that the factory intake manifold can flow enough air to produce good power numbers. I would imagine someone like yourself in search of 1,000 horsepower will want to go bigger but for the average guy (even above average in some cases) the plastic intake manifold will be sufficient in terms of power production.
Our concern comes from durability over extended periods of time. What happens after hundreds or thousands of heat cycles and high pressure? This is what we learned from NISSAN. Perfect example, the GT R. On the GT R they use a cast aluminum intake. The reason that they told us is because they did not trust the long term durability of the plastic manifold. In regards to the Z they specifically told us that the plastic intake manifold was never intended to see more than 4 psi over extended periods of time. Their concern was not in relation to performance, they were only concerned about cracking the manifold.
I'm going to let something out that I perhaps shouldn't and I'll probably get my hand slapped for it but I think it's good information. At last year's SEMA show one of my goals was to find and meet with a company who could manufacture plastic intake manifolds. We wanted to find a company similar to the one that NISSAN uses who could produce the manifolds for us out of plastic. This would have reduced the cost substantially as plastic parts are obviously much less expensive than cast aluminum and they wouldn't have needed any machine work or finishing powder coating or polishing...It would have been a lot cheaper and easier for everyone!
After talking with a couple of different companies and after our engineer's talked with the Nissan engineer's. We decided that for durability and increased life expectancy, we would stick with cast aluminum. It is no doubt more expensive and more time consuming but with cast aluminum there is no concern about cracking.