Careful shaping of the plenum...
Careful shaping of the plenum cover directs air into the runners and provides the intake with what is sure to become the modern "rounded box" standard in high-flow intake shapes. We doubt hand-grinding will do any good, but the easy-to-manufacture, two-piece plenum design does allow easy die-grinder access.
Charlie at Trick Flow figures on a "1,200-1,300hp" potential from this intake on a turbo'd Windsor race engine. That ought to be enough for anyone running a store-bought, cast-aluminum intake.
As for a lower horsepower level for the new High Flow intake, Trick Flow says its standard R-Series intake starts losing to the new box upper at 450 hp, while big-inch Windsors in the 408-cube league are ready for the box upper at 550 hp.
How Much And When
Production High Flow intakes will be in the stores by the time you read this and should be proving rather popular. As Rick Anderson of AFM put it, "We've ordered ours and they should be here soon," while Charlie Schmidt of Trick Flow noted, "They're on back order already."
Annual demand on an intake such as this is around 200 units per year, but we'd expect the market to initially buy them up at a faster rate as demand for an over-achieving, high-rpm, big-displacement, naturally aspirated and blower intake is quite high. That it looks modern and different from the usual crossover intakes doesn't hurt either.
Trick Flow is offering the High Flow Intake Manifold-that's the three-piece upper unit-by itself or in a kit with the matching R-Series lower intake. Both 302 and 351 versions are available, and you have a choice of raw aluminum finish as well as silver or black powdercoating. All offerings are complete with hardware and gaskets and are priced as follows.
| Natural Aluminum | Silver/Black |
| Intake | | |
| HFIM, only | $329 | $339 |
| HFIM, w/lwr | $639 | $649 |
| R-Series lwr, only | $339 | n/a |
| On the Dyno |
| Vortech | Trick Flow |
| Mondo Box | High Flow Intake |
| RPM | Power | Torque | Power | Torque |
| 4,000 | 228.2 | 299.6 | 234.8 | 308.3 |
| 4,250 | 256.2 | 316.6 | 270.5 | 334.3 |
| 4,500 | 278.6 | 325.2 | 312.7 | 364.9 |
| 4,750 | 303.1 | 335.2 | 334.8 | 370.2 |
| 5,000 | 341.3 | 358.5 | 359.1 | 377.2 |
| 5,250 | 379.2 | 379.4 | 388.9 | 389.1 |
| 5,500 | 400.3 | 382.2 | 414.0 | 395.3 |
| 5,750 | 416.5 | 380.5 | 437.0 | 399.1 |
| 6,000 | 428.3 | 374.9 | 457.9 | 400.8 |
| 6,250 | 439.4 | 369.2 | 467.8 | 393.1 |
| 6,500 | 450.9 | 364.3 | 474.3 | 383.2 |
| 6,750 | 458.7 | 356.9 | 475.9 | 370.3 |
| 7,000 | 463.0 | 347.4 | 473.3 | 355.1 |
| 7,250 | 463.3 | 335.6 | 467.8 | 338.9 |
| 7,500 | 455.1 | 318.7 | 456.6 | 319.7 |
| 7,750 | 437.7 | 296.6 | 442.4 | 299.8 |
Trick Flow sent a preproduction prototype of its new intake to Rick Anderson at Anderson Ford Motorsport for evaluation on Rick's in-house Dynojet chassis dyno and 347 Fox Mustang. While there are some obvious differences in runner inlet shape and exterior cosmetics, the functionality of the intake was close enough to the production parts that Rick's dyno numbers give us a great idea of how the new intake works, which is fabulous. "Incredible," is how Rick described the High Flow Intake Manifold's performance. "It outpowered and out-torqued every intake we ran it against," which was a who's who of big-power intakes.
In fact, to condense a long, hard journey, Trick Flow took its initial work on a box intake from well behind other manifolds in horsepower to about 20 hp ahead of everyone else without losing torque-real progress, that.
Rick ran the intake shown here on an in-house Fox Mustang fitted with a 347 engine and his High Rev gear. This is a 7,500-rpm 347 with attendant camming; good Trick Flow heads, exhaust, and so on, which is a minimum combination for the new Trick Flow intake.
For more on the other intakes in this category, see our "Spin the Throttle" test on page 79 of the Nov. '02 issue, which was also done on Rick's 347-powered Fox. In the meantime, here is how the new Trick Flow stacks up against Vortech's Mondo box, one of the top dogs in the aforementioned test.