$500 is still a good deal.. There are many people who spend over $800 for Intake Manifolds in the Honda world. Checkout these works of Art... They are beautiful...

- BMC Racing Products

$800-$1600 each...

 

Id drop 500 bones on an intake mani thats not just made out of a blox or skunk two or anything of the shelf.

 

Unfortunatly it would be close to impossible to create a good cast intake manifold for $500 due to the tooling cost.

The only way to do this cost effectively is modify a proven manifold, or create a sheet metal one. Even then you probably won't hit the $500 mark for a sheet metal manifold if it is created in North America as the average fab shop rate for Aluminum welding is normally $75-100 an hour and these manifolds take quite a lot of time.

Plus.... It may not won't work as well the skunk 2 or blox manifolds.

Full-Race Motorsports

Take a look at the above link.. This is a very nice cast manifold.. My buddy owns the above company.

AMS Evolution VIII/IX F1-I Intake Manifold :: Intake Manifold :: Engine :: Stikiller.com: Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 8 & 9 Performance Parts

This is one from his main competitor... The both sell tons of these...

 

Too bad we all didn't spend 30K on our miata like they did with EVOs though

 

Not that it really matters anyway, but wasn't BMC known for ripping off quite a few customers?

 

Huge thread here with BMC race. He's been fooling around trying to come up with a Miata mani - VERY SLOWLY. Most people including him realized we are generally cheap bastards and he wasn't going to be able to do it as cheap as he thought.

https://www.miataturbo.net/forum/t37410/

 

You know Geoff who owns full-race? or you know they guy who owns magnus who makes that manifold.

 

Thats probably part of the problem. I use to consult for a guy who constantly talked smack about the MK3 Supra guys. Mainly about them being cheap. The issue was, when most of the people bought the supra, it only cost them a few grand. So to many of them the idea of spending 10k on a full 2jz swap with a custom manifold was outrageou. To the MK4 owner on the other hand who spent 15k or more on the car this didn't seem so crazy.

When you can buy a miata for 1500.00 running and driving, its hard for some to justify spending 500.00 for an intake manifold. However, I don't think those people really appreciate what it took to build and produce it.

Sounds like a lot of the kids at the old shop with honda's saying why do I need to by that drag kit why can't I just weld the turbo to my header and have and then have and exhaust shop build me exhaust. Believe me it use to happen.

 

I know Marco from Magnus. I've actually met Geoff @ Full-Race a few times in the past, but don't know him that well.

Someone hit the nail on the head. Costs the same to produce and Intake Manifold for a $30,000 Car and a $5,000 car. The issue is that the owners may not see the same value in a $500 or $1000 widget.

$500 for a Cast Manifold would be really cheap, but it does not look like it will be a go since I only have 1-2 people interested in making the Skunk2/Blox Manifold fit our cars using a nice billet flange.

I tried...

 

Marc, I think that $450 to $500 range is about right for what people would spend. Sheet metal style, longish runners for mid range driveability, trumpets inside a tapered box. Dyno would be great but I'm sure there are plenty of volunteers as guinea pigs.

 

Making Sheet Metal for $450-500 is tough unless it is done in mass numbers. I've seen what is takes to make a good sheet metal intake which will last and it takes a long time and a lot of skill.

We have just purchased a Dyno here at M-Tuned and hope to have it installed in mid March. Once the snow melts and the weather get nice I will modify the Brand New BLOX manifold I have and see how the result are with my GT2560 setup. If I can make power with my small turbo, it will make power with the bigger ones.

Just have to get the dyno installed and the hydro 550v done so I can use the mill. (We just moved into a 5000sq ft facility, so we have work to do.)

 

Once I'm ready, I think I'm going to go local and see if ARTech can take care of it. If he can't do it, I'm betting he knows where to get it done. Unless someone else makes a before hand.

 

you should like... hire me

 

I had talked to Abe about welding up my hybrid and he said he wasn't sure about getting sufficient penetration (I've personally never had this problem).

Good thing is there are plenty of aluminum welders in Houston...will see how prices (and friendliness) goes.

 

So is the idea SN95 mentioned a non-starter? It would be relatively easy to have a mani that uses couplers instead of welding. Granted its not exactly top-flight engineering, but it would work well. All you have to really fab is the flange for the Miata head with some stub pipes maybe 2" long for each intake runner and cut the flange off the cheapo Honda mani. It might (probably) be neccesary to include a brace the could be bolted in on top of the had flange that connects to the Honda mani for the sake of strength. That would be very cheap/easy to fab though. If the edges of the stub pipes and also the runners on the Honda mani are beveled nicely you wont have much in the way of non-laminar flow in the runner, plus like I said you could even have different coupler lengths too. Maybe have the customer send in the Miata mani for the use of the flange too, which saves on matirals cost and having to fab the flange and stub pipes. That would also make this doable for the 1.6 guys with injector bosses on the flange too.

Something like that might be done for 250-300 bucks with batches of 10 and turn a profit for time/resources?

I totaly agree with the cost of ownership ideas. Evos are a fantastic example. Take a look at their aftermarket versus DSMs. There is just plain more money in it developing Evo parts.

However, if you look at this market, it is rapidly crossing that barrier into the built-engine area and that means you will likely see people willing to send some more bucks. I think the cheapness factor has bottomed out in other words. Look at 6ULs, the support for V-Bands, the swing away from band-aids, Rotrex kits, etc.

 

I think the cost of -quality- couplers would at least approach half the cost of TIG welding. At that point I'd rather have something that's surefire dependable.

 

People investing into the motor so far as whipping up a IM shouldn't be so ******* cheap where they'd resort to couplers because they couldn't just go ahead and weld some damn runners.

 

What about people running say a 2560 at 240ish WHP that just want a bit more top-end TQ from a stock long-block and dont want to spend 600 bucks?

Maybe it is not commercially viable, but it certanly might be interesting as a DIY. A stock B18 intake, a stock Miata intake, about a 16" of quality silicone, 8 clamps, some steel straping, a band saw and die grinder could be put to worse uses

 

then buy the BEGi IM when it comes out; the 1.6L model should be available to purchase if you call, not sure what price. If a 1.8L, just source a damn IM flange and weld it right up, that's like cake work.

 

har har

I can probably weld it just fine, but I want to experiment on my own manifold first.