10-24-2007 Good question.
It’s a shape that really wants to be cast. I’m going to price it out and see, but I suspect that to make just 2 castings will be cost prohibitive.
Trying to machine it would be a bugger because. Although is doesn’t show well in the pic, the runners are at a 60 degree angle to the engine flange, the TB mount centerline is offset from the main runner, and the runners go from round at the TB mount to an oval at the head, all adding up to areas that would need at least a 4 axis machine and a bunch of tooling/set-ups to be able to make it....and why it took me a couple days to figure out how to get the CAD software to even draw it.
So, what I’ll almost certainly do is make the engine flange and runners separate then weld them together. That makes the engine flange a simple machined plate and would let me make the runners on the lathe, then press the engine end into an oval and weld them on. 30 minutes with the die grinder later and you’ll never know it was even more than 1 piece. I can do all this in my shop at home on the manual machines I have, no CNC time required. This is the way I made the supercharger intake for the QV engine.
For this same intake for a QV, I’d CNC machine it from billet because the port are square to the mounting flange so it can be made with no special tooling on a 3 axis machine.
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