Welcome to the forums, Clint!

1) The heat kit can be found on www.truckmeblue.com. I think the guy who makes the heat transfer plate kits only wants $60 for them.

2) I would post your headers on the classifieds for the year range of your truck. And, quite honestly, you should consider trading your headers for an Offy intake and a carb to go with it. If you are going to make the exhaust modifications (even using the EFI manifolds), you really won't see much of the benefit unless you have the better intake and carb on as well.

I hope this helps. Let us know if you have further questions.

Aaron

 

Thanks for the info, I had no idea how I was going to get heat to the intake when I changed exhaust. And yes, I would be exstatic if I could swap the header for a intake upgrade.

 

I wouldn't necessarily say that headers are bad. Just that some are much lower quality than others and end up constantly leaking. Plus, there are fitment issues around certain axle setups.

The reason, though, that I like EFI manifolds vs. headers is they're an install and forget. They're robust, flow well, and best of all, stock.

Just best to make a decision before you pay for a full exhaust replacement though.

 

The EFI manifolds are a great choice but they do have issues too. It seems like at least one of them like to crack. For a while there every pair I came across had at least one that was cracked. I was beginning to think I was cursed in my hunt for a good used pair.

 

Interesting, I've never seen cracked ones before. Were they generally cracked in the same spot?

 

No they weren't all in the same spot.

I never saw any cracked either. Then I bought a pair from a salvage yard. I didn't bother checking them. Then later when I was cleaning them up before installing them I found a crack.

Then I decided to try my luck at the U-pull it place and took pulling 4 more pairs until I found a good pair.

And then I came across more cracked ones on a few trucks and vans I parted out.



Maybe it's just a Minnesota thing. All them below zero winter nights.

 

I wonder about the need for adding intake manifold heating devices to aftermarket manifolds on the Ford big six engine. Adding heat sure helps it warm-up, but after that? The exhaust manifold (or header) gets very hot, and it is in quite close proximity to your aluminum aftermarket intake, which will pick up a lot of the radiated heat. Clifford has made that water-jacketed carb spacer for years, but before the engine coolant gets hot enough to open the thermostat, the exhaust manifold is going to be pouring out radiant heat. In installations with tight engine compartments like my old '66 Econoline, vapor-lock was always a problem on hot summer days, and the stock intake manifold got way too hot to touch.

For a quick warm-up, yes, the directly-connected (pre-EFI) manifolds with the butterfly valve in the exhaust was a good quick-acting set-up. You lose that feature if you switch to headers and an aftermarket intake, but I don't think that is a big loss, because you still can have a valved hot-air intake into your air cleaner snorkel, a great invention. Those old factory coupled manifolds were a lot of the reason for the vapor-lock problem once the engine had warmed up.

Now, I live in a temperate climate, and you guys who live through cold winters may tell me that the snorkel-door hot air warm-up is not enough. Of course, there are always plug-in engine heaters, which I really like; they make for quick warm-ups, with a little more fuel economy, less emissions, and a lot less engine wear. But talking now about a warmed-up engine, yes, a warm intake manifold is always better (except when racing) on most any engine, but don't you think that on THIS engine the intake gets plenty hot enough, sitting a few inches from the exhaust manifold (that is way hotter than the coolant)?

And as for the water-heated carb spacer, I thought when Clifford brought it out that it was kind of a dumb band-aid. The intake manifold is what needs to be warm (to keep the fuel/air charge from turning into a puddle of liquid gasoline on the floor of the manifold). Putting heat to the carb mostly just will aggravate any vapor-lock tendency in summertime. I suppose you could disconnect the water hose for summer months.

I have one of the early Clifford single 4bbl manifolds, the kind that has no water passages, which was why Clifford started selling the heated carb-spacer, the band-aid. I modified my manifold in a couple of ways, one being to weld a water-jacket to the bottom of it. But after doing this, I thought, "Why did I bother doing that, the manifold is going to get plenty warm enough without it!?" (But I had just bought a new aluminum spoolgun for my MIG welder, and needed a project so I could play with it!)

 

Just a quick note on that, after a good two hours of driving at 65 - 70mph, when I didn't have any type of intake heat hooked up, I popped the hood and put my hand on the bottom of the intake. It was luke-warm at best.

I could've left my hand there all day. It was 'warm', and that was about it. I would've figured that with being bolted to the block and being directly above the cast iron exhaust manifolds it would have been roasting hot, but it was ANYTHING but. Luke-warm at best. Maybe 70°? I was blown away.

 

So my next question is, should a person go with dual or single exhaust pipes all the way back? I've already got a flowmaster 4244 on hand, no cat. conv., will be using the efi manifolds, the engine is a stock reseal/build and am trying to find an aftermarket intake (thinking 500cfm carb) that I can trade my new hedman header for.

 

2 1/2" single out is fine. 2" or 2 1/4" dual outs are fine.

 

Interesting, AB!! When I found my intake manifold (factory-stock 1966 version) running so hot, I thought maybe the warm-up valve in the bottom of the exhaust manifold had got stuck in the warm-up position. It wasn't, but the bimetal spring was rusty, and broke while I was fiddling with the valve. So I lock-wired the valve in the open (or "Off," or warmed-up position). The intake manifold still got very hot.

So I wonder what the deal is or was. Does your exhaust manifold have a sheetmetal cuff over it to collect hot air for the air cleaner snorkel door? If it does have a cuff, that could be keeping some of the heat away from the intake.

Maybe our different results simply reflects the difference in the engine compartments of our two vehicles. Your conventional engine compartment surely has better airflow through it than the "doghouse" engine compartment in those first-gen Econolines. FoMoCo engineers did considerable airflow and even wind-tunnel testing of that van to determine how to best get good airflow up and through, and down and out of the doghouse, and if you owned one, you didn't want to lose the sheetmetal pan under the front of the vehicle because it was necessary to proper airflow. But even with it, and even with a directly-connected, non-slip fan forcing some airflow, that doghouse got plenty hot if you were creeping along in stop-and-go traffic on a summer day. That said, however, my intake manifold got hot in the winter as well.

 

Cast iron takes longer to heat up then an aluminum intake. But it also holds the heat much longer then an aluminum intake. The aluminum intake is going to dissipate the heat much quicker. That why they use to make pots and pans out of cast iron!

 

And maybe that's the answer. But I want all you guys to go for a drive and then put hands on your iron or aluminum intake and lets get a show of hands.

 

There's a lot more heat transfer between the stock intake and exhaust manifolds since they're mated together. My Offy C and EFI manifolds don't physically touch. The intake never gets all that hot even with coolant plumbed to the bottom.

Adding the heat plate and plumbing for coolant definitely made my truck run better.