[PatBurke]

The only way to get one of these is to build it yourself. We built the billet base and Eshelman's Carbon Works built the top. I was originally building a sheetmetal intake and had just finished the billet aluminum base w/ valley tray to match my cylinder heads. I had talked to Wally Eshelman a year prior about doing a complete carbon intake but they could not duplicate the portion of the FE intake with the valve cover rail and pushrod holes. Once I had the base made I got to thinking that it wouldn't be any harder for them to do the top than it would be to do a BBC. I sent the base out to California along with all the critical dimensions. I told them what we wanted for overall hieght, plenum volume, runner taper, and roof angle and they took it from there. Those guy's used to work for Lockheed and had some pretty nice design software. They where also working with Sonny Leonard on some Pro Stock stuff at the time and getting some good feedback. A couple months later I had it on the car and went testing.

I didn't really have any problems with it but I did have to learn a new tune up. The intake eliminates heat transfer to the carbs and the lack of heat in the plenum and runners changes the way the fuel is atomized so that took some trial and error to figure it out. I also had to be more aware of vacuum leaks. Overall the carbon portion weighs 6 lbs. and the base weighs 12 lbs so it's 18 lbs all together. The Dove tunnelwedge that it replaced weighed twice that much. The car picked up about .10 to .15 in et compared to the cast intake.

Eshelman's is no longer in business but I've found the original tooling for my intake and hopefully will be getting possesion of it within a couple months. As far as I know they only built 15 -20 intakes of all kinds while in business, 2 Fords and the rest for BBC's. Mine was the only one ever done that wasn't set up for Dominator carbs. The other Ford intake is on Larry Overby & Hank Hill's 814 ci IHRA Pro Stock Ford Hemi. They've told me that it picked them up over the sheetmetal intake that they used to use.

Overall it worked out well. It's a lot better that the tunnelwedge that it replaced, and if nothing else, it looks cool and it gets a lot of attention whenever I take the hood of the car. I don't know that it's any better than a sheetmetal but I'm a glutton for punishment and have this need to try things that nobody's tried before. Some things work and some don't but I learn from all of them.

Thanks, Pat

P.S. I'll post a close up picture of the intake with my others if I can find a decent one