408 Stroker Build / Intake Question

The Pro Products was an agreed on try a year ago. It looked "ok". The casting was porous, it had a lot of pinholes and such. Not unknown to Edelbrock, but much less common with them. The aluminum used was definately more brittle. The holes were tapped poorly. I re-tapped them all to get things to go in easy by hand. he plugs they supplied for the non-used Magnum bolts I replaced with allen head pipe plugs because the plugs supplied were cracking the bosses when I was trying to tap them in. The gasket alignment wasn't bad for this one. Bolt hole alignment was a minor issue. And I am very careful how my manifolds fit. These heads had been cut properly. It eas the intake holes that were off. Once installed, it ran ok but there was a coolant seepage from the rear area near the head's water cross over passage (blocked by the manifold). I have never had a leak there. It was resealed and didnt stop. So the manifold was replaced with an Air Gap and it's been fine ever since. I think the intake was porous back there. In any event, the same car, same tuner, later.. ended up having to re-tune and go up 3 jet sizes to get the plugs to read properly afterwords. I believe it's because the RPM just moved a bunch more air. And after, the car averaged 17mpg in mixed driving... 422", 904, 3.23s in an E body. So I dont think it was a matter of having to go overrich to make it work. The RPM was just much better. The intake ports are smaller and longer in the Crosswind. And the plenum a hair smaller... At least going by my eye. For me, there were and are otehr places to save the $80 or whatever the difference is. I know DGC333 has a good one. Some have good results. I wasnt thrilled enough to use one again.