After rereading my post, I may have came across as saying that the designing process is easy. Please don't take that from my post, I know that it can take months and years to develop the right product. I was just saying that if you feel confident in you ACAD abilities, you may be able to design the product in your spare time.

Mike

 

Good post Mike. I strongly agree that getting the design and development done is the most important thing. Assuming that results in a manifold capable of xx more hp than a stock, or ported or E'brock version, how much will the LT1 guy spend for those XX ponies?

While it may not be a straight-line relationship, I think you could sell a pot-load @$100 per and VERY few @$2500 per. Let's say 1000 @ $100 and 40 @ $2500. That's $100,000 gross sales either way. Let's further assume the $100 part was a multiple piece molding like a FAST manifold now available for the LS1/6, and the $2500 part was CNC machined from aluminum, perhaps in a few parts and assembled.

The $2500 selling price is about $1000 lower than what you currently pay for similar manifolds because I assumed some economy of scale on a large palletized CNC machning center. I may have assumed too low, but this is just an exercise. OK, let's say the programming and tooling costs for the CNC part are $2000, and the mold costs for the composite are only $50,000, which I think is very much lower than actual costs for the FAST, according to what the manufacturer said a few years ago when it was released. You might take a FAST apart and have a mold shop quote on making tooling to produce similar parts. Do the same for a shop that makes moldings that size.

With these numbers, each manifold has $50 of tooling to amortize in it's price ($2000/40 and $50,000/1000). That tooling is 2% of the CNC part's selling price and 50% of the molded part's price. If your sales projections are off by as much as 50%, the CNC part's tooling is only 4%, but the molded part's is now 100% of the selling price. You are then, in fact, giving them away and paying the producer on top of it.

Even if you go to $500 for the molded part, and you sales drop to 500 units, your tooling is still $100 per or $20% of the selling price. That would scare me if I were investing money in such a project. Evidently you don't think so. I suggest you be the first significant investor and negotiate a portion of the bottom line as your return. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I, too would like to see such a product for the LT1. Unfortunately, since it has been out of production 10 years the folks who can now afford an inexpensive LT1 powered car are less willing to pay as much as an $800-$900 FAST LS intake costs (@Jeg's) for the same power increase.

This particular need has been investigated by others. The numbers just don't work out to be even marginally profitable. More's the pity.

My "wet blanket" doesn't come from a negative attitude, but from lots of years in manufaturing, in both large and small business.

Good luck to whoever tries it.

 

If all else fails, you could always make one perfect prototype by hand, take it to SEMA 2008, and leave it sitting within the vicinity of the Professional Products booth with hopes that one of their reps will spy it and start taking pictures so that they can rip off the design and sell it under a different name for cheap...

 

^^^LOL!

 

My buddy owns a shop and made a design, later a big Co ripped it off and told him they were gonna **** him and to try and sue if he wanted? These big Co's are ruthless.

 

Can you say who that company is/was? I don't blame you for not saying.

 

good idea....

 

I think depending on cost you could still sell quite a few of them. Us B-body guys don't mind paying for somethign that works. heck the only mid and long tube headers for our cars cost over $700!

 

Do they free up more than 15 hp on a H/C car? My guess is they do.

 

Why of course they do. They're good headers I was just stating, that some guys would be willing to pay a decent chunk of $$$ to have that manifold. Heck some would buy prolly for the "coolness" factor.

 

I agree with the power gains and price guidelines set here.
Look at when the F.A.S.T. intake came out for LS1 for like 800 bucks!
People bought enough and still selling.

I feel if it's composite, has out of the box gains mentioned above, room for more gains with porting - and either dual pattern/2 versions for GEN 1 and GEN 2 it could be near $500

Fuel rails - well if they gotta move to mold the intake for power - offer fair priced matching rails.
It works for Edel heads on many motors needing special bolts/pushrods to use them.

Throttle bodies need to fit from stock to monoblade - maybe a cheap adapter.
Injector bosses need to fit any aftermarket and not restrict flow.
I'd love to see it with a top mount rear distributor provision as well.

Someone mentioned the Edel intake failed us because they stuck to thwe stock design. I agree. Every Performer series looks like stock and most perform at or below stock level. Not until a high rise dual plane or single plane do we see real gains with cams and ported heads.
Hopefully this pans out - many used Edel LT intakes will be for sale cheap

 

maybe makie it to be used with LS1 rails, so we can swap over.

 

oooohhh - and cheap used parts too - nice idea!

 

well i like the LS1 rails, they blend into the intake and they dont need to be polished to look good. and the FPR is in the front and not hidden in the back

and even for a TB, we can use the LS1 monoblades. theyre a dime a dozen. but the only thing with that is the TPS.

 

late post but I would certainly love to see some significant progress on the LT1 intake. However, I'm just not that hopeful that something like this will ever come out. The intake better atleast put out 15+rwhp at the minimum to even become popular at a price point equal to the edelbrocks.

I know people know I'm one of the very very few people that have posted results (and my reasons) with going with the edelbrock intake this summer. Granted if this new composite intake came out, I would certainly pick it up if it has proven results for the cost.

Prove me wrong and someone build this intake...

-Brian

 

I'd be game if you can make one that I don't have to re-torque every 3 months to keep oil from pissing out the backside of the manifold.

 

90mm LSx throttle bodies are $400+ so I have no idea why you would want to use them.

 

im talking about the stock throttle bodies from them.

 

I'm with you on this idea - inexpensive used parts I meant - plus the perks you pointed out.
If they could be fitted to an LT intake that would be a sweet mod

 

LS fuel rails won't work on an SBC (gen1 or 2) head. On an LS rail, the injectors are spaced to match the symetrical intake ports of the of the LS head.

If you were determined to use an OE rail, you could reuse the LT rail or an L98 type rail if you wanted to bring the fule lines in from the front of the manifold.

Several aftermarket rails are available for retrofitting SBC carb manifolds to EFI that have the injectors with the proper port spacing. They're not too expensive either.

I would love to see this project hit the market. For a larger market I would manufacture the manifold in two pieces: al a FAST.... You could produce one common upper plenum and different bases that would work with GEN 1,2 and VORTEC heads. The runner layout would be the same for all versions with differences in coolant routing and mounting flange in the base to accomodate all the SBC derivatives. You could actually use the same basic base molding or casting, with final simple machining determining which head the base would fit. If you were to produce a beta run of say 25 manifolds, leaving the base unmachined until you had a demand, you could then final machine the manifold to the head configuration of your customer. If the LT market wasn't what you hoped, you could sell it to the Vortec or L98 crowd. The L98 guys spend mad cash for manifolds on engines that were superceeded by our LT1s.

Just thinking out loud.
Van