This is a bit of a soap box brain fart for 300 lovers. So forgive any nonsensical ramblings. For those folks who are interested in increasing the performance of their aluminum or iron head 300s, you may be aware of a company named Extrusion Honing located in Pennsylvania. Years ago, I read an article about their process for honing the internals of high-end aircraft and Eurocar heads, intakes and exhausts. If you're not familiar with the process, they basically pressurize an abrasive paste and force-feed it through the engine components. The grit of the paste can be varied depending upon the type of material being honed. Whever the paste contacts material, it hones and polishes the surface. Seeing 300 lovers struggle with the topic of buying, adapting or building performance intakes lead me down this path. What if we could get seat-of-the-pants performance improvements in our stock pieces without hours upon hours of hand grinding or fabricating, etc. The port shape remains the same, just all the flashing is removed and some surface imperfections scrubbed off. So, I contacted the company. For a one-off piece like a cast iron 4V intake from a '65 300, the cost is $585. Hmmm. But, how do I justify the cost? I've received great help from Greg Williams and Sean Etson on the adaptation of Huffaker, Wilpower and Harcourt 215/Rover intakes to the '64 alloy head motors. But, if I wanted to build a high-performance iron head mill, my options continue to be very limited. That's my only justification. I think that I'll starting saving some pennies to try it out. First, I'll have the local head shop get a flow rating on the stock intake for comparison purposes. At least it will be a base line. That's as far as I've gotten so far. I'd be interested to chat with anybody out there who has had first-hand experience with extrusion honing. Things that keep me awake at night.
i came across an intake, now my question is, how do i know if it fits my engine ('66 300) . My uncle had this laying around from when he had his buick, last ran in 91, and he can't remember whether it was for a 340 or 300, as some of the skylarks and specials we've stripped for parts had one or the other. i want a 4bbl, and there are so few options out there. i'd love to get some aftermarket intake, but $$ is not going to allow. if in fact i found a 300 manifold, i have no probs doing porting polishing myself on heads and intake, but first thing is first, i need to be sure i have the 300 manifold. is there a casting # somwhere i can look for. i have 4 '66 & '67 300's in the garage, all 'run' o No: , but all of them came with 2 barrel carbs.
There's also a company here in Paramount, Ca., on Somerset Blvd, Extrude-Hone, that does the same pressured media "porting". It works fairly well, have had some aluminum two stroke motorcycle cylinders for road racers done, not as specific in metal removal as they claim, expensive. I got to the point of doing all my porting first, then had the media light forced instead of heavy metal removal.
300 or 340 ID From www.buickclub.org : on the top back of the block, above the surface where the tranny bolts on is a casting number. #1357943 is 1964-66 300 cid #1374557 is 67 340 cid The 4bbl cast iron 300 v8 intake was a one year only part (1965). The casting number is 1366695 ... I will check my car tomorrow to be sure.... The 1964 aluminum intake was also a one year only part. Search this forum for info on the 300..... :Comp:
>>i came across an intake, now my question is, how do i know if >>it fits my engine ('66 300) . The 340 intakes are considerably wider than the 300. You can determine which engine it fits by just measuring the width. I installed an aluminum '64 4 bbl intake on my '66.....I did enlarge the ports to match the '66 heads. Seems to work well....I wonder if these manifolds could be worked to flow as well as an iron '65? Geeze... I wonder if it even flows as well as a 2 bbl iron manifold!! Sometimes I really wish I had a flowbench!
Some folks will go to great lengths to get a good intake to work with the cast iron 300 heads: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~bdaley/rp.htm Greg
