Ford 2.5 V6 Duratec Intake Trombone
Discussion
Just for the hell of it, my son decided to fabricate a stainless steel intake for his V6 Ford Cougar.
The pictures below show the progress so far. Its turned out to be a bit of a pig to do but it should be done in a couple of days.
He has tried to follow the basic principle of design as the original cast version but the internal sizes are slightly larger and obviously much smoother.
Do you think that fitting this would be an advantage or disadvantage? I suppose if it doesn't work he can always hang it on the wall or donate it the Tintwistle Brass Band
The pictures below show the progress so far. Its turned out to be a bit of a pig to do but it should be done in a couple of days.
He has tried to follow the basic principle of design as the original cast version but the internal sizes are slightly larger and obviously much smoother.
Do you think that fitting this would be an advantage or disadvantage? I suppose if it doesn't work he can always hang it on the wall or donate it the Tintwistle Brass Band
Max..... Where the runners join on to the headers he has tried to form a "bellmouth" but due to the lack of room its not much of one but it should help. The 90 deg elbows at the end of the header will have air turning vains which are more efficient than radiused elbows. Hopefully he will finish the bulk of the fabrication tonight. Also, the manifold is argon purged when welding is taking place so all internal finishes are smooth and snot free.
Andy..... The butterflies are housed in the lower inlet manifold which the top manifold sits on so, yes, they will remain. He is fitting a lower inlet manifold from an ST220 which have slightly larger bores than the standard one fitted to the cougar engine.
Like I said in the OP, he's just doing it for the hell of it. Many people in his car club have often spoke about doing something like that, as the original manifold does seem to be restrictive, but have never got round to it. He's just given it a go because, well, he can. The materials cost less than £50 so no great loss if it turns out to be worse than standard.
The car is going on the rollers on Sunday where it can be compared with other cars with the standard setup. If it works, it works. If its crap then its coming off and will probably be hung on the wall in his living room
Andy..... The butterflies are housed in the lower inlet manifold which the top manifold sits on so, yes, they will remain. He is fitting a lower inlet manifold from an ST220 which have slightly larger bores than the standard one fitted to the cougar engine.
Like I said in the OP, he's just doing it for the hell of it. Many people in his car club have often spoke about doing something like that, as the original manifold does seem to be restrictive, but have never got round to it. He's just given it a go because, well, he can. The materials cost less than £50 so no great loss if it turns out to be worse than standard.
The car is going on the rollers on Sunday where it can be compared with other cars with the standard setup. If it works, it works. If its crap then its coming off and will probably be hung on the wall in his living room
NTEL said:
Max..... Where the runners join on to the headers he has tried to form a "bellmouth" but due to the lack of room its not much of one but it should help. The 90 deg elbows at the end of the header will have air turning vains which are more efficient than radiused elbows.
An elbow of sufficient radius will always flow better than a sharp 90 degree bend with internal vanes.Mr2Mike said:
An elbow of sufficient radius will always flow better than a sharp 90 degree bend with internal vanes.
In some circumstances you are correct. In this case we couldn't install a bend with "sufficient" radius. In the majority of cases a sharp 90 deg elbow with air turn vanes IS more efficient. Turning smaller quantities of air using vanes is much better than trying to turn a large mass of air all at once.Max_Torque said:
Come on then, was it 
or 
???
Hi Max, or ???Well it seems it was a great success
Final installation turned out like this:
Work of art really. He also installed a pair of decatted exhaust headers and an optimised Y piece collector.
Bearing in mind that the the engine has done 85,000 miles and is 13 years old with an output of 167 bhp, when new, the results are great.
Whilst on the rollers the ECU was also remapped to suit the new exhaust and inlet manifold and the final result was a whopping 206 bhp!!!!!!!!!!! 220lbft of torque is also healthy!
Car pulls and performs so much better.
I suppose the moral of the story is, if you get an idea, just give it a try, it might just work!
This trombone will be staying on his car and wont be donated to Tintwistle Brass Band
oh yea of little faith. It all works and that was the aim so we're not going into more testing with it. We know it flows about 15% more air than the original ford cast alloy unit as we tested it with my medium pressure gas purging fan and air flow meter set.The basic design is no different than the original Ford cast alloy manifold. Its just smoother and flows more air.
Edited by NTEL on Sunday 30th October 21:59
So you increased power by 23% with an intake manifold change??
(oh and taking out the catalysts and a remap!)
(to make 206bhp from a 2.5l engine at 5950rpm would be a BMEP of 12.4bar and even if you managed to get 100% manifold volumetric efficiency would require a BSAC of 3.34kg/kWhr. Added to which, a peak torque figure of 220lbft (~300Nm) would require 15.1bar (119.7Nm/l), none of those figures are practically achieveable with the modifications that you have made)
Come on, who was leaning on the load cell on the coast down?? ;-)
(oh and taking out the catalysts and a remap!)
(to make 206bhp from a 2.5l engine at 5950rpm would be a BMEP of 12.4bar and even if you managed to get 100% manifold volumetric efficiency would require a BSAC of 3.34kg/kWhr. Added to which, a peak torque figure of 220lbft (~300Nm) would require 15.1bar (119.7Nm/l), none of those figures are practically achieveable with the modifications that you have made)
Come on, who was leaning on the load cell on the coast down?? ;-)
Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 30th October 22:22
Max_Torque said:
So you increased power by 23% with an intake manifold change??
(oh and taking out the catalysts and a remap!)
(to make 206bhp from a 2.5l engine at 5950rpm would be a BMEP of 12.4bar and even if you managed to get 100% manifold volumetric efficiency would require a BSAC of 3.34kg/kWhr. Added to which, a peak torque figure of 220lbft (~300Nm) would require 15.1bar (119.7Nm/l), none of those figures are practically achieveable with the modifications that you have made)
Come on, who was leaning on the load cell on the coast down?? ;-)
LOL.........that lot went straight over my head! Have done a little google research and what you say makes sense. I guess the rolling road guys have done a little tweaking with the figures (oh and taking out the catalysts and a remap!)
(to make 206bhp from a 2.5l engine at 5950rpm would be a BMEP of 12.4bar and even if you managed to get 100% manifold volumetric efficiency would require a BSAC of 3.34kg/kWhr. Added to which, a peak torque figure of 220lbft (~300Nm) would require 15.1bar (119.7Nm/l), none of those figures are practically achieveable with the modifications that you have made)
Come on, who was leaning on the load cell on the coast down?? ;-)
Edited by Max_Torque on Sunday 30th October 22:22
No matter though, whatever the true figures are, the car is noticeably quicker and smoother and he has a nice piece of engineering, he can call his own, under the bonnet. Still a success in my book.
Thanks for all the input lads
I'm not sure where the 220 ft/lbs comes from as reading across the graph the peak torque line is barely higher than the peak power one so maybe 210 ft/lbs.
However even this would be 84 ft/lbs per litre which as Max says is way off the mark and 220 ft/lbs would be 88 per litre which is insane. Torque and power per litre targets are discussed in detail on my website here.
http://www.pumaracing.co.uk/gentune.htm
Power per litre targets have a wide spread because there are such large variances in engine design and rpm limits but torque per litre is much easier to predict. There's only so much air you can get into cylinders of a given size on a single revolution in a specific state of tune. No matter how high an engine revs and how many bhp it therefore produces the torque figures will never exceed fairly well known limits. To get really high torque numbers you need long duration cams, ported heads and strongly pulse tuned induction and exhaust systems, preferably with one butterfly per cylinder.
At 84 ft/lbs per litre you'd need to be into the full race tune category with big valve ported heads, hairy cam, throttle bodies etc if these rolling road results were accurate. A realistic figure for a stock 4v engine with mild intake and exhaust mods is low 70s ft/lbs per litre. That would indicate maybe 180/185 ft/lbs at most and consequently high 170s to 180 ish bhp if any part of the shape of those graphs can be relied on. That's certainly enough of a gain to be noticeable on the road but I can promise you that if it really had just gained nearly 40 bhp and 50 plus ft/lbs it would feel like a bloody rocketship not just a bit quicker.
I'm afraid I have to add those rollers to my list of dodgy ones.
Rolling roads can spit out any numbers they've been (mis)calibrated to produce but one thing engines can never beat are the laws of physics.
However even this would be 84 ft/lbs per litre which as Max says is way off the mark and 220 ft/lbs would be 88 per litre which is insane. Torque and power per litre targets are discussed in detail on my website here.
http://www.pumaracing.co.uk/gentune.htm
Power per litre targets have a wide spread because there are such large variances in engine design and rpm limits but torque per litre is much easier to predict. There's only so much air you can get into cylinders of a given size on a single revolution in a specific state of tune. No matter how high an engine revs and how many bhp it therefore produces the torque figures will never exceed fairly well known limits. To get really high torque numbers you need long duration cams, ported heads and strongly pulse tuned induction and exhaust systems, preferably with one butterfly per cylinder.
At 84 ft/lbs per litre you'd need to be into the full race tune category with big valve ported heads, hairy cam, throttle bodies etc if these rolling road results were accurate. A realistic figure for a stock 4v engine with mild intake and exhaust mods is low 70s ft/lbs per litre. That would indicate maybe 180/185 ft/lbs at most and consequently high 170s to 180 ish bhp if any part of the shape of those graphs can be relied on. That's certainly enough of a gain to be noticeable on the road but I can promise you that if it really had just gained nearly 40 bhp and 50 plus ft/lbs it would feel like a bloody rocketship not just a bit quicker.
I'm afraid I have to add those rollers to my list of dodgy ones.
Rolling roads can spit out any numbers they've been (mis)calibrated to produce but one thing engines can never beat are the laws of physics.
... of cause the large turbo strapped to it does slightly increase is effective capacity lolPumaracing said:
Thanks, actually I've read it before but always worth reading again.The torque figures in your post for a 2.5 are spot on. I'm running a 2.5 16V and it produces 180ft/lbs.
I'm interested in this for the Noble 2.5.
I'm currently having the St200 manifold fitted. would be interested to see if this is any better.
If I could borrow it I can get my garage to do back to back test? If it proves to be better then you might be able to sell a few?
Also while I'm here, would it be worth fitting the ST220 lower Inlet with the ST200 inlet manifold? Bear in mind the Noble doesn't have the secondary butterfly's as these are removed and My ECU is fully programmable.
Thanks
Bondy
I'm currently having the St200 manifold fitted. would be interested to see if this is any better.
If I could borrow it I can get my garage to do back to back test? If it proves to be better then you might be able to sell a few?
Also while I'm here, would it be worth fitting the ST220 lower Inlet with the ST200 inlet manifold? Bear in mind the Noble doesn't have the secondary butterfly's as these are removed and My ECU is fully programmable.
Thanks
Bondy
Gassing Station | Engines & Drivetrain | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff