Rod Builders' Garage

I have always wanted to build a fabricated manifold… and early hemi tri-powers are cluncky or costly, this was a good excuse.

It was not too bad…. I got lucky because the flanges that bolt to the heads are made to adapt early heads on later 392 hemis… I found them on ebay for about $40. You can make your own, but I’d make them pretty thick…. about a half inch so they are stable and won’‘t warp. It would be tough to machine them back flat.

As you can see, if you look at my gallery pics, I cut out cardboard to get the shape I wanted (the jury is still out on whether or not it will perform well). My first attempt got trash canned. I took my model apart, traced the shapes onto 3/16 aluminum and cut each part out. Then, I taped it all back together just like the cardboard. To get everything to fit good I had to file here and there. Then I called in my buddy Donny and he tacked (TIG) everything together while it was still bolted to the motor. When he welded it up it did move some and I had to use my port-a-power to spread the runners back apart.

I made the top of the manifold bolt on so that if I wanted to change to two fours or any other carb setup I could later. My wife bought me the old school Barry Grant two barrels for Christmas last year. (She bought me the Hemi the year before… how lucky am I?)

I built the linkage myself. I turned the bases of the stacks out of aluminum them sand blasted them for a rough finish. The groves were painted flat black. The tops are 3” stainless steel tubing pressed in. I am using modified Black and Decker hand vac filters to keep the dirt out. The only thing I have left to do is pin stripe the stacks.

Altogether it probably took me about three weeks in my spare time to build it.

In the mean time in the past few days I have installed the bear claw door latches… Next i have to strengthen the doors with a framework and some sheet metal.