Is the intake on the 84 painted from the factory or natural?
If it should be painted would it be black?
Thanks!

 

Aluminum. Not painted.

 

Thanks Frizlefrak,
This winters project is to finally insrtall the ported intake that I bought ovare a year ago. It was ported and sand blasted and has a dull aluminum finish -I couldn't tell looking at the one on my car if it had been black and just flaked off or just dirty.

 

the stock crossfire intake is a neat looking manifold. a lot went into making that design. pretty advanced for 82 when it was introduced. as Frizlefrak stated, the intake manifold is raw aluminum. the valve covers and the air cleaner housing are painted magnesium!

 

Pix...?

 

Ported intake will wake up your Crossfire a bit. Make sure to balance your TBI's correctly when you're putting them back on. If she's got over 100K, change the timing chain and gears, set base ignition timing to 10 degrees, and she'll run better than new.

 

My car has 91k miles and runs pretty good -especially after I replaced the clogged converter.
So, I won't change the timing chain & gears yet, but I'll set the timing as you recommend -I haven't looked it up, but what is the factory timing.
Balancing the TBI's... if I'm just switching everything over, does that affect the TBI balance?
I have seen balancing TBI's discussed, but my car runs so good that I have not looked at how or why to balance.
If it runs and idles fine and I just switch evertything over, will I still need to balance them?

Thanks

 

Crossfire TBI's get out of balance over time as a normal course of events. Balance is critical to the car running correctly. Think of it this way....if one throttle plate is open even slightly more than the other, one bank of the engine is getting more fuel and air than the other. Result is less power, vibration, and fuel economy.

This obviously isn't an issue with a TPI....both butterflies feed the entire intake. But on a Crossfire, it's an overlooked part of a tune up. It's not hard to do, just a bit time consuming. You'll need a water manometer, or you can make one yourself with wood, clear tubing, and dye. I don't recall right off hand, but I think you want 6" of water on each TBI at idle. Balancing the TBI's on my old Crossfire made a big difference...they were way out of whack.

Factory base timing is 6 degrees. Unhook the brown wire to the distributor, set base to 10 degrees, rehook wire, clear codes and drive the car. If you get any pinging, back it down to 8 degrees and try again (I didn't get any pinging, and it REALLY woke up the car off the line).

You'll probably want a new timing set at some point soon. My car had 132K and was VERY sloppy. A new timing set made it drive like a whole different car....smoother idle, more power, better fuel economy, better vacuum signal to the sensors, easier starts, just an overall happier engine. I figure I was losing about 4-6 degrees of timing advance with the old set.

People are always wanting more power out of their Crossfires. Getting them to run like they did when they were new is half the battle, and most are severely out of tune.