Front "China wall" sealing issue on SBM
Well thanks to a fellow FABO member @416stroker it's obvious now why I couldn't get it to seal. It's not a simple issue of my methods being wrong because like I said I've swapped intake manifolds on small blocks at least 10 times and only ever had a sealing issue on this engine. It turns out the underside of the intake manifold on that passenger side front corner doesn't have a wide enough "flange" to seal up against the block and head in that area with this specific combo of parts. The pics he shared with me explain it all...
What's odd is I once ran an RPM Air-Gap on a 360 LA block with factory iron Magnum heads and didn't have this issue but maybe I just got lucky or didn't notice it as much lol. Oh well at least now I know!
Well thanks to a fellow FABO member @416stroker it's obvious now why I couldn't get it to seal. It's not a simple issue of my methods being wrong because like I said I've swapped intake manifolds on small blocks at least 10 times and only ever had a sealing issue on this engine. It turns out the underside of the intake manifold on that passenger side front corner doesn't have a wide enough "flange" to seal up against the block and head in that area with this specific combo of parts. The pics he shared with me explain it all...
What's odd is I once ran an RPM Air-Gap on a 360 LA block with factory iron Magnum heads and didn't have this issue but maybe I just got lucky or didn't notice it as much lol. Oh well at least now I know!