Hello everyone, I am new to the board(long time lurker). I do not actually have a Dakota, but rather an 01 Ram that I am building an engine for at the moment. I wanted to tap into some of the old wisdom on this forum to answer some questions.
I know that the topic of modifying the kegger manifold has been beaten to death, but in my combing through the archives of various forums, it seems many of the references to flow bench testing modified keggers are no longer available. There is still the allpar intake shootout with a stock and mildly modified kegger, but I am primarily concerned with a fully ported unit, not just shortening the runners and gasket matching. For instance, I found someone saying that Ryan Hogan has "proven" that porting a kegger doesn't do anything to increase it's flow numbers, but there was no link and a search revealed nothing. Does anyone have this reference?
I have really only found 1 data point so far, which is a before and after dyno test done late last year by Thomas Beyer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPhjWDkFncQ He fully ported his kegger and made 285/336 at the tire with a 224 duration cam, 10.3:1 compression, and ported stock heads. He made 270/317 with that same combo but a slightly modded kegger, so he picked up around 15hp/19tq all along the curve with his port job. He had some home-made volume reducing plates, but no oil splash shield or flow diverter.
Seeing as I am building an engine for a heavy 4x4 truck that does regular tow duty, moving to an air gap or M1 (unobtainium these days) seems a poor choice. I would very much prefer to stick with the longest intake runner possible, and try to maximize what is there. I plan to install Marty Fletcher's volume reducing plates, flow diverter, and oil valley pan splash shield, as well as fully port my keg. Additionally, it seems to me that one of the primary flaws with the kegger is the intake air temperatures. Since the coolant shares a wall with the intake runners, it is very prone to heat soak and thus has higher IAT's than other styles of intakes. Has anyone come up with creative solutions for lowering IAT's with a kegger?
Thanks!