Cam and intake cooperation

[mountainexplorer]

When you have a stock or RV type cam in a 454 (low RPM power range), and someone puts an Edelbrock Streetmaster single plane intake on the motor (designed for a higher RPM power range), would the end result be a motor that seems to not have much consistent power?

 

[ZooMad75]

I think you have diagnosed your issue. If the cam is stock or at least a RV grind set up for low end torque for towing, a single plane intake is about as far from right as you can get. The cam is set to build torque at a low RPM but the intake won't start flowing well until higher RPM's are reached and so low end torque suffers. I would bet that a move to a dual plane intake would bring the low end torque back.

The single plane intake belongs on something that sees a lot of HIGH RPM activity, mud racing or drag racing. Single planes just don't work on a tow rig engine with a small (stock or RV) cam.

 

[diesel4me]

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I agree with ZooMad---but my brother had a stock 70 454 in an 82 K30 years ago--only modifications were a Competition Cams "Off Road and Towing" came ground for low end power...no other alterations..it was the "base" 454 out of a 70 Impala,no rectangular port heads or any hi-perf stuff factory...

The only intake we had (aluminum) was an old Wieand that was an "open plenum" design,and the carb mounted diagonally instead of in its normal configuration...despite the fact it was designed for 3500 rpm and up use,his truck idled smooth and pulled like a freight train even when lugging it at slow speeds....it had awesome torque!...but I bet it would have been even better with a dual plane intake(or maybe even the stock cast iron Q-jet one! )

We wanted the aluminum intake to reduce weight mostly...we never swapped anything different on it,so I guess we'll never know for sure...but for an intake that was never desiged to work at low RPM's,we were amazed at how well it ran...might be due to the 1970's high compression ratio,the later motors only had 8:1 or so--this one was 10.5 to one factory back then....