ITB Intake Manifold interest
 

We are finishing up our 8v Individual Throttle Body Intake Manifold proto-type,
and as soon as the new turbo and down pipe go back in, we can fire it up
with just a little more work. We are also in the drawing & design stage of the injector flange for the 16v heads. With a different runner, that will follow hopefully yet this year.

Just curious what level of interest there might be for something like this so
we have an idea how much time or priority to invest.

Don't have a price yet, but we are hoping for less then 1/2 the Mileage part.

The 8v version was flowed today and even with 3,000 ft. air, and 100% humidity, it did perfectly balanced 297 cfm @ 28" on every port. Far more then any 8v head is going to that we have seen. Production version should slightly improve since we can improve radius's.

This version used 45mm throttle blades. We have 48mm available which will
help for the 16v flow targets we have set.

We will be shooting for 350-375 on the 16v version. That's what a real nice head
could flow so there will finally be a intake worthy of the head.

In addition, we are going to try to run this with a DME/KLR.

:corn:

Mike,

I have taked to JME about their manifold a few times and they felt that it was a bad fit for someone building a street car. They mentioned the manifold's powerband sweetspot, complexity and cost as considerations. As I understood it, they saw the manifold as being more appropriate for dedicated track cars.

What market segment are you targeting with this part?

Having a manifold option for 16v 3.0 turbo is very interesting propisition if the solution is thoroghly tested before being brought to market and appropriate for a street car.

ITBs on a 968 engine would be very nice as well.

I would love me some ITB's on my S2! ;)

Not sure I need ITB's but I do need a manifold for a 16V head with equal runners. Do you have anything?

Our goal is to have it work on a street car with DME/KLR. If it will work there, it
will certainly work with EMS on a track car. So a nice fire up and idle are important.
Other then that, there is no reason not to put one on a street car should you want the
look and performance.

If we limit it to track only, with EMS, then that limits sales of the unit and we try to avoid
that.

As for complexity, there in one TPS, one throttle cable, but four throttle blades. We had
some nice custom connectors for the shafts that should prove reliable. It's made from
many more pieces, obviously, but most of them don't move.

Having yet to run it, we don't know what it's going to do. It does look good! So far it's
been a fun project, and it's flowing more then ever expected. And the fact that it
was identical across the board, was also a very nice surprise since it's a front
feed plenum.

This has longer runners then the JME I believe, and we can add two 1" spacers to lengthen or tune it,
between the blade and runner, although one could argue on a boosted car whether that makes any difference.

There is no longer a Yellow oil fill cap! That's gone and moved. That allowed the larger plenum which
being a fabricated plenum, can be built in different volumes depending on customer needs.

"I would love me some ITB's on my S2!"

It's going to be a natural for NA's 8v and 16v cars. We just need to figure out how
we want to collect the air from the AFM or MAF. Any examples that can be shown from
other markets would be nice to see.

You should offer a full plug and play setup with megasquirt or something similar and delete the AFM or MAF. That would be the most badass for an NA car to avoid a plenum entirely. Add a 924 style hood vent to feed them and bingo.

Fuji Racing offers a bunch of kits for miatas if you were interested in another market.

http://www.fuji-racing.com/fujiracing_007.htm

If I remember correctly, the milledge intake utilized individual sliders instead of throttle butterflies. The sliders make it difficult to drive at anything less than WOT.

Those sliders are so cool to watch though haha.

Next we need a kit for some standoff injection.

The JME unit does not use slide valves, it uses barrel valves. Big difference. I talked to a guy at PRI that has a ITB manifold already made up for an 8v N/A. A customer paid to start the project and got very close to the end and disappeared.

It was offered to me to finish but was not high on my priority list at that time. IMO, throttle bodies are the way to go vs. slide vavle or barrel valve. Much safer as well.

This made me laugh. Sounds like a shiny intake that failed miserably on our dyno.

I picked up a couple of books on intake manifold design and turbo systems. A few of the authors felt that that manifold design made a lot of difference in a turbo car. The argument was that longer and uneven runners would make a big difference for turbo lag. The pulse action of this configuration at low rpms would improve performance before the turbo spools. Personally, I hate turbo lag. The downside of this configuration was the loss of some performance at high rpms.

I recently sold my supercharged 2006 Mustang GT. We had a lot of discussions about matching the intake manifold to the desired powerband. Apparently, this requires some very complex engineering. The firms I was consulting were using some sophisticated computer modeling to come up with the right designs. Muscle Mustangs and Fast Fords magazine also published a couple of articles on the same topic.

Any opinions on how this applies to a 951? Are these sources making to much of an issue for something relatively small?

"This made me laugh. Sounds like a shiny intake that failed miserably on our dyno. "

We would expect YOU to say that as that's how you do business.

I think the goal here for LR is a manifold that offers intense flow up top, and can perform with any degree of head and valvetrain modifications. Interestingly, I've found that most cars making oogles of power, and performing well with lots of engineering behind them, used things like ITB's and stand-off injection. While only one of these things is really available for a turbo car, I think that one could pick up a noticeable amount of power simply from utilizing an ITB setup to it's full potential. Not meaning for MAX FLOW, but instead for most optimal tuning. Runner length, throttle plate diameter, intake horn design and taper... They're all a factor. With a boosted setup, I'd want really super short runners, and short horns, or stacks with a small taper. Large plenum design and good tuning, would really unlock a turbo car, even with SOHC design!