Posted by chriscase on Tuesday, July 26, 2005 at 12:32PM :
In Reply to: Header posted by David on Tuesday, July 26, 2005 at 3:01AM :
Air conditioners work by vaporising a fluid into a gas. A pickup truck might evaporate a gallon of gas in 10 minutes. If you don't replace the heat that is soaked up by the vaporisation, you can have the fuel re-condense into un-burnable liquid. Know as 'puddling', it causes backfiring in the exhaust on decelaration. Also lost efficiency (milage) and pollution.
EVERY stock motor has some way to heat the incoming fuel charge. Like exhaust heat risers. 70's era Ford V8s had a 1 inch water heated aluminum spacer to vaporise the fuel better. The 95 F250 5.8 I just picked up has one too- built into the throttle body. I built one for my 428 Cobra Jet in my 72 F250. I made it as tall as I could fit- I placed a beer can on top of my air cleaner and slammed the hood. About 3 1/2 inches as I recall. Longer tubes are better for low end. Sure made that smog monster run smooother.
I too made a set of headers/ intake for my flathead. Mild steel muffler tubing. I brazed a 1/2" copper tubing along the underside of the intake- about 2 feet, bent into a W shape and heavily brazed. That was the limit of my capabilities then. Later for the Ford, I worked in the machine shop and made the 4 bbl spacer out of 4 pieces of tubing to match the carb, surrounded by a piece of 6 inch tubing, all aluminum, MIGed to Aluminum plate. Hose barbs screwed in front and rear. It sure looked High Tech. EVERYBODY who saw it asked what it was for....
Copper pipes brazed to steel plate would work excellently.
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