Performance Design New Intake Manifold
 

Has anyone seen any testing or actual results from Performance Designs new XS intake manifold? They make some pretty solid claims on their site about how it performs compared to some others (namely the stock manifold) but I haven't been able to find any dyno sheets or independent testing performed on it. Just curious if there's any validity to it or if stock rod mod/ported is still the way to go. Thanks for any responses!

Richard Holdener did some good testing on these. Apparently, there are actual gains to be had over stock intake/stock engine, as the company claims. Very nice gains on cam+heads engine as well, but with larger throttle bodies. I have been following these for a while and have been tempted, but they are kinda ugly, although the pricing is very nice. I think he tested it with each throttle body size. Its been awhile since I watched it, but I was rather impressed they could improve against the stock intake on a stock engine, although gains at this level were minimal. Its when throttle body size and engine mods are done that increases are substantial and worth it, imo.

When you see these opened up its insane to see that they can actually flow. Its packed inside that casing.

The main concern of mine is that they hide the fuel rails inside the intake, which is kind of scary sounding to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6Xf20nHZSc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edEyi82gZzI

Awesome, thank you for the videos! I agree it's not the best-looking piece of equipment I've ever seen, not by a long shot. I was interested in them taking some design cues from the LT6 with the differing length runners, I thought it may pick up something, just wasn't sure exactly how much. I'll give the video a watch and see what kind of numbers he came up with. Thank you again for the links!

Keep in mind this test was done with a 427ci motor with a healthy dose of compression and a monster camshaft in it. This is the kind of combination that would disadvantage that factory intake the most. It's also a completely untouched factory manifold, porting and rod mod usually picks up 10-15whp on your run of the mill 376ci motors with a cam, so call that a full 15bhp on the dyno curve they show for the factory piece. So, figure more like a 10-15hp gain for the PD XS vs. a ported and rod mod manifold. That doesn't invalidate the test by any means, but it does color it and position the PD XS to come out looking like more of a hero that it likely actually is.

Definitely looking forward to seeing more testing on this manifold, hopefully with a more modest test motor. If the true gain is really only like 10hp, and it takes a $1000 intake and $700 throttle body to get there over $400 worth of porting and rod mod, then a consumers $1,300 difference would likely be better spent elsewhere to achieve better gains. If a customer is looking to squeeze everything they can out of a combination that still fits under the hood and doesn't murder the torque curve, then this may be the niche for this manifold. We're hoping we get an in-house customer that wants to run this manifold some day so we can get our own testing done on it.

Definitely agree with the price:performance ratio there. A stroker lies firmly within my future plans, so that may end up being a fit for me eventually. That's also where my curiosity stems from. I know there's rarely, if ever, a one size fits all answer, but I'd definitely be curious to see if it's something that picks up anything on a more modest engine as well or if it's just worth standing by on it. I'd certainly be interested in a thread of someone else volunteering to do the spending for the testing to save me the trouble if anyone ever does it.

So I took the plunge. I ported and smoothed mine as well as shaved the top of the runner, plus ported matched to my tsp heads. I posted everything on lstech.

I will dyno mine in May on a dyno I always use. The dyno reads true, mustang dyno high altitude. My TSP heads made 36 hp over stock from just a head change and bump up in compression. 235 cam, 64cc heads, and with this new intake. The reason why this inatke is so much better is there isn't a sharp turn in for the air when coming into the runner. I have only found one dyno run on a 6.2l where they posted the gains. It was 20hp that's pretty good. I would like to see more.

Here are some pics of my build.
It's not that cluttered inside, just mive the injectors under the rail.


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Which TSP heads did you go with?