Sobie:
I appreciate the fact that you have the intelligence and interest (and, MOPAR mentality) to want to try to make some parts that will help in trying to get more air into and out of a slant six motor, so more horsepower can be made.
That's the whole idea, isn't it; to make more power?
Well, the sad fact is, doing that with a slant six motor that is normally-aspirated, is more of an up-hill battle than it should be because, the cylinder head was designed for a 170, and never changed in regards to head flow (when the engine was stroked to a 225) and the result is a motor that, no matter how good the design of the intake sytem might be, all comes to a screeching halt at the OEM head/port/valve infrastructure and although small gains can be made, there is simp[ly no way to move a LOT of air through the valves and ports of a normally-aspirated slant six that is 35-percent larger than the engine that the head was designed to feed..
Guzzi Mark (FABO name) has managed to make a normally-aspirated slant six look extremely good on the drag strip by putting an unusually well-built engine in a very light car that really HOOKS. It turns in times that make me shake my head in wonder, but when you get right down to it, the engine is not actually making all that much power... it just LOOKS like it is because he knows what he's doing when it comes to the application of what power he DOES have to work with.
He uses every trick in the book and a few that were never in a book, I think, to make his car quick, and it IS quick; leaves like a GOOD V8 car...
But, most folks aren't able to take advantage of his expertise and will never have a 2,350-pound A Body, (like his is,) with most weighing in at around 3,200 pounds.
A slant six that makes 1.3Hp/Cu. In. will make 225 X 1.33 or about 295 hp.
Not many normally-aspirated slants will make that much horsepower on gasoline unless they're all-out, full-race motors, which aren't very streetable.
In a 3,200 pound car, 295 horsepower willl get you a time card with a high 12-second number on it, IF everything is maximzed for the quarter-mile.
Street driveability will be severly compromised in a variety of ways.
Most slant six owners if they want more power, would like to be able to bolt on a few hop-up components, like say, maybe a 4-bbl intake manifold, headers, hi-compression pistons, a wilder cam, and a good, size-matched 4bbl carb, and go racing.
They can do that IF they are going to be happy with a low 14-second car that runs mid 90's in the quarter
The absolute best EFI system in the world MIGHT pick their car up three tenths, and that's stretching it. MAYBE 100 mph in the quarter.
I'm not saying that you can't have a lot of fun with such a car; what I'm saying is that the cost of a custom-designed EFI fuel injection system is going to be out of line with the amount of HP gains it produces.
Bang for the buck will always be a heavy player in this game.... and, in this case, it's just not there. The potential for sizeable horsepower gains from a different intake manifold and injection system is not going to happen.
However, there IS a part that you could produce that would actually offer great bang for the buck, be relatively easy to make for sale, has NO moving parts and has what I believe to be a ready market in the slant six commuity.
I didn't have anything to do with the design of this part and I don't even KNOW the guy who did think it up, but it's a really neato part that has a lot of potential, as regards bang-for-the-buck.
His FABO screen name is "PISHTA" and he built one of these for his own low-buck turbo installlation, and best I can tell, it works on all levels!
He took a piece of 2-1/2" small-radius U=Bend exhaust tubing and attached a flange that would bolt onto the stock slant six exhaust manifold on one end, and welded a turbo mount on the other end (on the same plane.)
You bolt it onto your stock /6 exhaust manifold (where the exhaust down-pipe used to bolt on) and, with no welding on the manifold, now have a turbo mount that will work well, and won't make your cast-iron manifold any more prone to cracking than it was before you made the change. Stock slant 6 exhaust manifolds are prone to cracking; welding a turbo flange onto one only makes the probability that they will crack that much more likely.
All you'd need is to measure the space availible, buy some U-Bends of the appropriate size, acquire some 2-1/2" flanges that can be welded to the U-Bends and attach the turbo mount to the other end of the U-Bend, and you're done!
This system mounts the turbo on a horizontal mounting flange pretty much over the motor mount, I think, and if you put the battery in the trunk (where it belongs,) there's an abundance of space to work with.
I wish I'd thought this up... but, I'm not that smart. It is SUCH a good idea!!!:blob:
With a setup like that, you could add a Snowperfformance Boost Cooler alky injector and run 15 pounds of boost through a stock motor and make an easy 250 HP on pump gas, never having removed the head or cam.
Don't take that to the bank, but I really believe, having read what I have about how slant sixes respond to turbocharging, that it is true...
You asked for opinions; that is mine... and it's all only JUST my opinion.
But the deal about the strangulated nature of that original 170 head (and, they all are; the 225's are identical,) is a pretty educated guess. The ported, big-valve heads are better, but still don't flow all that well, normally-aspirated.
Forced induction can be a way around that. It can be simple (cheap) or complicated (NOT cheap) and that's the engine builder's choice...:coffee2:
I hope you'll give this some serious consideration; the slant six commumnity NEEDS that part (turbo adapter!)
BTW, you can't grind a cam on a lathe...:director:
