Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

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Walter R. Malik
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Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by Walter R. Malik »

I just have a simple question about many of the 2 plane, air-gap style intake manifolds in the marketplace.
Which ones are clones of the Edelbrock, which ones are actually casted by Edelbrock and which ones have their own engineering involved in their production ...?

This is merely for me to clear-up a lot of the "stories" I here about all of these ones within the marketplace.

I actually have a lower profile "Air-Gap" type, 2 plane intake for a S.B. Ford here, (brought in by a customer, bought off Ebay), which is not as tall or as big inside as the Edelbrocks so, it must have been engineered somewhere; no name on it anywhere.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by ou812 »

As for Fords, we've had real good success using the Summit brand intakes...made as much or more power than expected.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by Tuner »

Street driven engines need exhaust heated intake to have decent fuel distribution. At steady speed and light load the 'air gap' intakes will foul plugs in some cylinders and be too lean in others.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by Walter R. Malik »

Tuner wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 5:22 pm Street driven engines need exhaust heated intake to have decent fuel distribution. At steady speed and light load the 'air gap' intakes will foul plugs in some cylinders and be too lean in others.
Those facts are probably true however, totally immaterial to the original question asked.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by GARY C »

EMC tv did a test with 4 of them, they said the Dart and Edelbrock were USA cast, i believe in the same foundry, the Professional Products appears to be a knock off of the E AirGap but with no floor texture in the plenum, the Wiend they said was China made but it has a kicked out plenum, no notch in the divider and the vac port on the rear has been moved so that you can actually use it with a carb installed,someone clearly engineered it different then the other 3... This is SBC, but my guess is if there is no name it is a knock off and the small changes may be just so the copy is considered not a copy and there for legal.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by BobbyB »

Tuner wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 5:22 pm Street driven engines need exhaust heated intake to have decent fuel distribution. At steady speed and light load the 'air gap' intakes will foul plugs in some cylinders and be too lean in others.
Tuner, please take a look at my thread about timing curve... my RPM AIR GAP may be showing the exact thing you are describing.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by SchmidtMotorWorks »

GARY C wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 7:50 pm EMC tv did a test with 4 of them, they said the Dart and Edelbrock were USA cast, i believe in the same foundry, the Professional Products appears to be a knock off of the E AirGap but with no floor texture in the plenum, the Wiend they said was China made but it has a kicked out plenum, no notch in the divider and the vac port on the rear has been moved so that you can actually use it with a carb installed,someone clearly engineered it different then the other 3... This is SBC, but my guess is if there is no name it is a knock off and the small changes may be just so the copy is considered not a copy and there for legal.
It is harder to make a 2 plane manifold that performs well than it looks.
Even duplicating within typical casting tolerances often involves performance setbacks that are difficult to find the reason for and fix.
This holds true even when a company remakes tooling for a product they already make.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by GARY C »

SchmidtMotorWorks wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 11:10 pm
GARY C wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 7:50 pm EMC tv did a test with 4 of them, they said the Dart and Edelbrock were USA cast, i believe in the same foundry, the Professional Products appears to be a knock off of the E AirGap but with no floor texture in the plenum, the Wiend they said was China made but it has a kicked out plenum, no notch in the divider and the vac port on the rear has been moved so that you can actually use it with a carb installed,someone clearly engineered it different then the other 3... This is SBC, but my guess is if there is no name it is a knock off and the small changes may be just so the copy is considered not a copy and there for legal.
It is harder to make a 2 plane manifold that performs well than it looks.
Even duplicating within typical casting tolerances often involves performance setbacks that are difficult to find the reason for and fix.
This holds true even when a company remakes tooling for a product they already make.
Oddly enough every test I have seen on all of these intakes ever sold in the past 15 years shows them so close they are within the margin of test error. 2 to 3 hp and tq at the best... dyno graphs lay over one another from start to finish for the most part.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by SchmidtMotorWorks »

GARY C wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 11:20 pm
SchmidtMotorWorks wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 11:10 pm
GARY C wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 7:50 pm EMC tv did a test with 4 of them, they said the Dart and Edelbrock were USA cast, i believe in the same foundry, the Professional Products appears to be a knock off of the E AirGap but with no floor texture in the plenum, the Wiend they said was China made but it has a kicked out plenum, no notch in the divider and the vac port on the rear has been moved so that you can actually use it with a carb installed,someone clearly engineered it different then the other 3... This is SBC, but my guess is if there is no name it is a knock off and the small changes may be just so the copy is considered not a copy and there for legal.
It is harder to make a 2 plane manifold that performs well than it looks.
Even duplicating within typical casting tolerances often involves performance setbacks that are difficult to find the reason for and fix.
This holds true even when a company remakes tooling for a product they already make.
Oddly enough every test I have seen on all of these intakes ever sold in the past 15 years shows them so close they are within the margin of test error. 2 to 3 hp and tq at the best... dyno graphs lay over one another from start to finish for the most part.
If you have been at Edelbrock when they remade the tooling, you would have seen something else.
They rework them to make them as close to the same as possible because they are used in so much spec racing, it would be a problem if one manifold was better because of the year it was made.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by GARY C »

SchmidtMotorWorks wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 11:24 pm
GARY C wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 11:20 pm
SchmidtMotorWorks wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2019 11:10 pm

It is harder to make a 2 plane manifold that performs well than it looks.
Even duplicating within typical casting tolerances often involves performance setbacks that are difficult to find the reason for and fix.
This holds true even when a company remakes tooling for a product they already make.
Oddly enough every test I have seen on all of these intakes ever sold in the past 15 years shows them so close they are within the margin of test error. 2 to 3 hp and tq at the best... dyno graphs lay over one another from start to finish for the most part.
If you have been at Edelbrock when they remade the tooling, you would have seen something else.
They rework them to make them as close to the same as possible because they are used in so much spec racing, it would be a problem if one manifold was better because of the year it was made.
So how does that account for the 15 years of testing the Chinese knock offs against theirs with no power difference? You know the knock offs are not making changes or testing to improve a $180.00 intake.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by SchmidtMotorWorks »

GARY C wrote: Mon Oct 07, 2019 12:01 am So how does that account for the 15 years of testing the Chinese knock offs against theirs with no power difference? You know the knock offs are not making changes or testing to improve a $180.00 intake.
Several possible scenarios.
Some will not register a difference because the engine isn't limited by or especially benefiting from the manifold.
The engine is limited by something other than the manifold.
In some cases the Chinese pattern makers will use plaster based methods that duplicate better than someone scanning, modeling and machining new tooling. The later is a vastly superior method but the typical practitioner is a hack, so fidelity to the original is not always very good.
Pattern makers have an irresistible urge to "fix" castings, sometimes they make them better sometimes worse, sometimes it all averages out.
By the time it get to samples, no one usually has energy to do anything more than get it into production.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by Kevin Johnson »

SchmidtMotorWorks wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2019 1:23 am ...
Pattern makers have an irresistible urge to "fix" castings, sometimes they make them better sometimes worse, sometimes it all averages out.
...
I saw this with Ford Zetec E sumps. I purchased a number of used ones and there were three different casting gate dimensions. I talked to an ex-Cosworth engineer at the 2006 (?) PRI show and he confirmed that pattern makers have a great deal of latitude.

Going much further back, an old friend and engineer explained that the differences that I saw with Renault timing chain covers were related to which Renault plant around the world made the castings. The differences could be quite dramatic and clearly beyond just the influence of the pattern maker.
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by bobmc »

you see manifolds advertised as "permanent mold", what does that mean? and is it better than sand cast?
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by GRTfast »

bobmc wrote: Tue Oct 08, 2019 6:51 am you see manifolds advertised as "permanent mold", what does that mean? and is it better than sand cast?
The mold is made from steel or ceramic or something like that, and isn't destroyed after one use. I'm not sure how to quantify which one is "better".
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Re: Edelbrock "Air Gap" clones

Post by mt-engines »

A permanent mold can hold much tighter tolerances with virtually no core shift as the cores fit in a machined part of the mold. There are high pressure and low pressure permanent molds.

Sand castings the cope and drag are 1 time use only and take more time to cool before the part can be shaken out of the sand.

From a mass production scale Permanent molds are essentially the way to go.
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