My Father and i are about to purchase a TPI from FIRST. I am interested in getting the TPI painted black. The issue is, how much heat would the black TPI hold vs the chrome TPI. The Black TPI would obviously hold more, but would you notice the difference in your Torque and Hp from the heated air?


Thanks, Jordan.

 

the color is not enough to make a real difference. My stock intake is painted black.

 

Being as the underhood temps of these vettes are warm anyway it shouldnt make a difference. Get what you think looks good.
Like that as far as a TPI system

 

It's hard to imagine paint would hold much (add'l) heat in -- if any.

To save some money, you could paint with engine paint (the 500-degree stuff) and bake it in your oven). That's similar in toughness to baked enamel.

 

I have the First Injection sytem on my 89 coupe and am happy as frog in 40 feet of water. I had my motor stroked to 383 and have hedman long tube headers, crane 1.6.1 roller rockers, 24 lb injectors, corsa exhaust, no cats, 2500 stall converter, 308 posi and a beefed 700R-4. I pulled 363 rwhp and 427 ft. lbs torque about two weeks ago on the dyno, and I picked up 6/10ths and 7miles per hour on the 1/8 mile. Ken at First Injection was extremely helpful during the build and always answered personally when we had a question or minor problem.
He even made sure I had no hood clearance problems or distributor clearance issues. I like it a lot! If I new how, I would post a picture or two.

My only regret is in the cam selection, which has too much overlap and too little vacuum, which doesn't have anything to do with the First system, and at WOT it pulls and runs strong especially thru the mid range. I'm still looking for the best cam for my needs, and have found a local pro who will install it for me at a brother in law price! " To be continued".

Steve

 

Steve, if you have taken any digital piuctures of your First TPI, then all you need to do is upload them here http://forums.corvetteforum.com/phot...y.php/cat/1310 look over on the right side and you will see an upload command.

Thomas

 

Heads?

 

Thank you for sharing ! That is very good power..... not sure, but I think the First might be the best long tube runner set-up I've seen based upon that power !

Can you share what your 60's, et and mph was in the 1/8th (or 1/4) ? Where do you race ? When did you race ?

thanks !

 

Thats a stout torque number without spinning it way up high.
Which heads/cam?

 

I usually run at either Miami's Countyline dragway or at the Homestead speedway. Both are 1/8 mile. My best et was 8.12 with 1.94 60 ft and 87.89 mph. This was with a .308 rear and street tires! My heads are stock aluminum with 1.6.1 roller rockers and a lopey cam (LSA of 108) that pulls real strong, especially in the mid range. I usually shift at about 5200 rpm's. but has idle and vacuum issues I am trying to deal with in another thread.

The install was very straight forward and like I said, Ken was very helpful with advice when we called him on a couple of small issues.

I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.

Steve

 

Since the cam specs weren't included

 

Thanks for sharing..... you need to slap on some slicks and hook it up, you should be good for easy 1.6x short times. The rear gears are fine.....

Just as a note at 87.89 mph in a C4.... you will pick-up about 4.35 seconds in the 2nd half..... thus you were on pace for approxmiately a 12.4x et if you were running the 1/4.....you would have picked up approxmiately 23 mph in the 2nd half of the track, thus 110-111 mph.

good luck

 

Nice, thats a good gain! Man if you had a strong head on there it would really pick things up, night and day difference.

 

Night and day?

Actually, my first thought was how unnecessary a good head might be for any TPI (long-runner) build -- since I consider this the best long-runner intake! The numbers he's getting are just under where I expect to end up using AFRs -- though I won't be using the FIRST.

Taking that one step further, it would be VERY surprising (yet impressive) if one of these intakes could break the 400rwhp barrier. My guess is he could gain 20-25 (max) at the rear wheels with "good" heads. (And, that's no where near the 40-50hp numbers AFR throws at everyone -- including TPI builders. By that, I mean how AFR compares their potential vs other aftermarket/ported heads. (Not to say I'm not impressed with AFRs,,,,just that their application is better applied to non-TPI-apps.)

Unless some really nice porting has already been done (and not reported here), I gotta think ported stockers (under the FIRST) would be the best bang-for-the-buck. Since that gets 35-45 more cfm**, it should be more than enough to support the jump to 385-390rwhp (the number I'd expect gains from a stock FIRST to stall at). Of course, torque would be out the wazoo!

**Note: 65cfm is about what TPIS CNC-porting would bring -- but the price is too similar to other new, aftermarket heads NOT to consider other options.

 

WOW. Finally some real world numbers on this intake. REALLY surprised that much power on stock heads...

Pics of the install would be great... I will be installing mine in a week or two - after many months of polishing

 

Many months? WTH? I polished my (SLP) intake and it only took about half-an-hour!

 

Gregg youre comparing a 200cfm head to a 280 cfm head it will put more than 20rwhp down and extend the power range too. Cam with overlap is really helping the stockers along. Regardless the guy has a good running car.

 

I'm comparing what he's putting down (with stock heads) to what I think it's possible to put down -- using FIRST long-tube runners. And, I can't see this guy's motor needing an add'l 80 cfm to gain an add'l 20-30rwhp (or from 425rwtq to 450rwtq) 380-390rwhp is where I think this application (383/FIRST) is likely to hit it's ceiling. I don't see it hitting 400rwhp -- even with serious porting.

Edit: Either the dyno report is too high, or these heads have already been fully ported, or the air supply is closer to "adequate" for a TPI application than normally acknowledged. IOW, we need to call on the dyno, the lack of significant porting to Stevie1dr's heads, or the benefit of AFRs under a TPI.

One of the 3, you pick.

 

Interesting

 

half an hour?

Granted I was lucky to get an hour every couple of weeks - but still.

Had to work through 5 levels of sandpaper to knock it down smooth enough to get it to polishing compound.....

The runners look like Chrome now....