[Sonic Blue 85]

Porting the upper will get expensive, but it will pick up some just depends on what is done. I have not heard of anyone getting an intake extrude honed in a long time but that may be the most effective way to port the upper. The lower needs to be welded in one or two spots before being ported, to staighten out the runners. The upper can be cut open, have the runners ported, then thin the plennum front and rear walls, open up the cross over and then if you are not trying to be stealthy and want the most you can get out of the intake, have the plennum extended to increase vollume. You would wind up spending a lot of money getting all of this work done, I have done all of this work to multiple intakes, but have never heard how much is normaly charged for this work. Basicaly getting a cobra fully ported with all of the tricks would make for a great intake for your combination, but the cost I would bet would be over $1000 just for the work on the intake.That would not make much sence to spend that amount of money on an intake at this power level. If you happen to come across a used intake that has the work done to it already, I would buy it, other wise it would be wiser to spend the money some where else. Getting the lower runners flowing equally would probly be work the money. I have a friend who bought a used GT40 lower with a custom made upper, that made a lot more power than most people would have thought possible. He had a 306 built that he was promissed would build 400 hp, it had ported big darts. This was about 10 years ago when there multiple atermarket intakes out but most were very expensive and did not make much power. I told him that he would be luck to get 330 out of the engine. He rented an engine dyno and hired a tuner for a weekend. He rounded up every ported GT40 and cobra intake he could find. One of the intake he had,was a GT40 that had larger runners welded into the upper and a larger cross over welded in, then the custom upper with a large plennum and larger much longer runners. They ran every intake combo that he had except for the custom long runner intake. Most of the intakes made between 313 hp to 319 hp I think one might have made 330 hp. So he was got frustrated that his engine was not going to get close to 400 hp. Every body there desided the custom upper was not going to be any good,so they did not try it until all else had failed. That intake wound up making like 397 hp. So basicaly the biggest restriction is in the upper, but it will cost a lot of money to make much of a difference. I have found that with the right combo you can make about 320 hp with a GT40 head and cobra intake. It is possible to make more, but it requires spending more money.

[BHAM]

im a huge fan of the gt40 family...they cannot be beat under the curve to 5500....the only other intake that competes with it under the curve is the stock one, but it shits out way before 5500...like sonic blue said, dont listen to what the magazine say..thats just big money pushing a product.......

[Sonic Blue 85]

If you want to talk about big money pushing a product, how about all of the magazines pushing comp cams extreme energy cams and the bee hive springs that they claim are used by NASCAR teams, I have seen a lot of used NASCAR heads and no bee hive springs, they usually have Dell West springs and retainers on them. Comp makes some good parts, but there is definitely some bias there. Comp ground the cam that I have in my car but it is not a stock comp grind, it's one that I cooked up myself. I am going to have them grind a turbo cam soon, for a turbo car that I am building, but I need to determine the what lobes to use and where to place them first.

[Sonic Blue 85]

Adding to what I talked about in the last post, have you ever noticed how the magazines will do dyno comparison tests on cat back kits, muffers, shorty headers, cold air kits and intake manifolds. But if they do a cam comparison test, they will test a bunch of comp cam extreme energy cams against each other and then maybe throw in an E cam to compare the comp cams to. In the 20 + years of subscribing to mustang magazines I have never seen one do a test comparing comp cams to Crower, Lazer, Lunati, Anderson Ford cams, Trick Flow, Earson, Crane, or any of the others. I realize this is more difficult to do, but they get paid enough money they could afford to do such a test. I would take some time to do it right because you would need to swap out and degree all of the cams, they would probably have to limit the test to streetable cams for say a 306. Then it would be great if they would show how these cam work with actual exhaust systems that are actually run on mustangs instead of dyno exaust systems, that usualy consist of race headers and large straight pipe or just a pair of race headers. I don't see this ever happening, but it would be great if they did such a test and it was not biased, basicaly meaning all cams would be degreed properly and have proper spring pressure, properly tuned to each cam and all other factors being equal.

[coupe5oh]

My explorer intake/head combo make for a good mild setup, Im running mid 12's 3,150 lbs.
If i had a decent cam, and longtubes, or "trick parts" I think i could see 350 rwhp....

[Sonic Blue 85]

Not bad, I have wanted to build a combo like that for a while. It would have been nice if Ford would have kept the 5.0 in the mustang a little longer and used at least the GT40P heads and Explore intake if not the GT40X heads and some better pistons and possibly a 3.25 stroke crank. With these part the Mustang would have done much better against the LT1 and LS1 F bodies. The crap for parts they used build the 5.0s they put in most of the mustangs was basicaly garbage comprared to the parts they have used in some of the 4.6s and 5.4s.

[90gt]

Basically what I have learned over the years(the hard way) is HAVE A GAME PLAN !! If you sit down & design what your wanting to do then buy the parts for that application youll save LOTS of money. Dont just buy stuff, cause you got a good deal on it & throw it at your car & expect it to do GREAT things.
Also make a plan with a good COACH (someone who has done the R&D work). Any shop can make you spend $$ & go faster than what your doing right now, but some shops can do it with less parts & get better gas mileage or use less NOS.

[marunos]

GT40 heads with cobra intake would be a great combination. Consider an E-CAM (FRPP) 24 lb/hr inj. BBK pressure regulator.

[95 GTS]

I will claim that my car had one of the best budget minded combos there is. It took me over a year to spec out and collect the correct parts for the right deal.

It still could have used some fine tuning with a performer intake rather than typhoon.