Recently a US Patent was issued
for an inventive intake manifold idea
that was come up with by a Ford engineer named Ma.

Go down and read about it about three quarters of the way down this article:

http://autospeed.com/cms/A_109721/article.html

where the sentence begins:

Ford's Tuned Intake

With a Magnum V8 'kegger' intake manifold
the idea would be that instead of cutting the intake runners shorter,
you would extend the runners out
so that they nearly met the mouth of the runner to its matched 'brother' runners and all the runners could 'resonate' at twice as many rpm points.

 

Ya, even as I was cutting the runners, the concept of pressure wave resonance was in the back of my mind (having read some on the topic recently). Runners are typically designed to provide an air charge that is equal to the cylinder requirements, and at the same time facilitate a reverse pressure wave that will resonate back with perfect timing to help pack the runner again for the next intake stroke. Cutting the runner down is contrary to both of these design elements. But, several people have done it and said it had positive results, so that is why I am trying it for myself (note though that I did it on a spare intake so I could revert back to the longer runners of my stock intake if I feel I lost to much low end). So this is definelty not a scientific mod by any means. Reminds me more of the type of mod the old hotrodders would have tried in their garage late at night to try to find a little more HP. I'm sure a if the Chrysler engineers who designed the kegger were to see what I did, they would probably cringe.

 

You mean sort of like the way I cringed when I realized the engineers who designed our plenum gaskets made them out of notebook paper?

 

I am a big critic of the plenum gasket plate
but I have heard from an engineer at the
Chrysler Technology Center where they analyze problems
that the plenum gasket disaster happened
because the thread taps on the automatic machines
were not adjusted right at a supplier's factory
where the aluminum kegger intake manifolds were made.

This created threaded holes that were not deep enough
for the bolts to torque down properly and press the gasket
particularly at the rear of the plenum.

However you can still blame the engineers
if you point out to them
that the plenum plate could have been designed for the top
near where the throttle body bolts on....
in fact if the bottom of the throttle body had been enlarged
all those additional parts could have been avoided and costs lowered.

The plenum is needed as a place for the sand in the casting to be
removed after the aluminum cools.

It would have been better for the Dodge intake to be plastic
but at about that same period of 1992-1995
Ford was installing a plastic intake manifold from a supplier
that ended up cracking after just a few years of service
so perhaps we should be thankful to have avoided that.

 

Unfortunalty, I didn't avoid it. I had a '97 Mustang GT, and the plastic intake cracked on it. Let me tell you, that was fun.