Your setup is a lot like mine. I have the Performer RPM but would run a Wiend Stealth if not the RPM. There is almost no measurable difference between the RPM and Air Gap (except the price) but people in cold climates complain about rough running with the Air Gap.
The cam you are considering won't do much under 2500 rpms, and the T289 will toast any dual plane by the time your cam comes on strong. That being said, it is strange what you say about the T289... I had one when the Performer RPM was introduced. I worked at a speed shop and allowed peer pressure to get me to replace the T289 with an RPM. Horrible mistake! The RPM showed little to no gain off idle and just became more and more of a dog as the rpms increased. This is compared to the T289 anyway... I know the intake makes power, but it feels truely restrained when you run a T289 for years and swap the intake on with no other changes. If you are going to run that cam and decent gears, a mild single plane like the T289 is the way to go. If you actually have a T302, that is not the same intake and does not have the same kind of throttle response. The AG RPM, though I have never run one, is only an RPM with no heat... All that does is keep fuel from atomizing properly at low RPM. If you are looking for that kind of RPM, then the single plane is what you need. (Btw, I block the heat risers on all my engines no matter what) Anyway, FWIW, the only way I got some lost power back with the RPM was to run a 2" carb spacer. It still didn't rev nearly as fast, but it helped... except for the fact I couldn't run an air cleaner. Needless to say, the T289 went back on and the RPM found another home. Problem solved.
Is this by seat of the pants or timeslips at the track? Just wondering just by some of my experience`s what feels faster doesn`t allways show at the track.
That is the best intake ever made for mild/moderate SBFs. Years ago, that was one of the only good intakes we had, pre-5.0L. The old timers did a lot of testing that intake. They say that the only place that mods improve performance of the T289 is the top of the plenum. Smooth it out and blend it down into the roofs of all the ports. Then port match the ends of the ports. They say that any reshaping or grinding in the bottom of the plenum or port entries actually loses flow. Just a heads up for when you start modding. Dave Btw: A comment was made about newer products being better... Edelbrock discontinued the T289 for 2 reasons: 1: The T289 was a complex casting and expensive to make. This was the most pressing reason to Edelbrock. The T302 was a much cheaper casting process and gave more profit margin. 2: Hood clearance. The T302 is much shorter and came out when Mustang 2s and Fox bodies were becoming the rage and had hood clearance issues. However this just gave Edelbrock an excuse for the real reason... (#1)
I must admit... Seat of the pants. It 'felt' restrained and slower revving. It 'felt' much better when I put the 2" open hole spacer on. It 'felt' much better still when I put the T289 back on. I will also admit, it was not a huge loss going to the RPM, I just was used to years of driving the car with the same intake. Therefore the 'seat of the pants' feel was profoundly familiar to me. I took the car to the track with the T289 and ran 8.4 in the eighth IIRC, close to 90 mph (88 IIRC). It's been many years. I know the 60' time was around 2 seconds because the car never hooked... street radials. I wish I had done it with the other intake now. However, back then it felt slower, so in my mind it would have been a waste of time and money to go to the track with the RPM. That brings me to the question: If your car has too much torque and wheelspin with a single plane, why would you make things worse by using a dual plane? Dual planes are for heavy cars. That's my story, and I'm stickin to it!
I'm actually planning on swapping manifolds at the track on the same day I'll know which I like better then
well i could always just run down to the local chassis dyno.. run the rpm get it tuned swap to the torker and run it and compare curves.. but smoking tires and angering the local population is much more fun > did we hijack this poor guys thread..
i too am looking to change out from my performer 289 intake to either of the following Performer RPM Weiand Stealth which one is better.. and i wont really be driving muich in the winter, so that is not an option.. and winter will be almost over when i do get the money to do it.. i will also be changing heads to RPM heads, cam will be abuot 512 lift or so, and i will be putting either 3.89 or 4.11 gears and a track lok in it with some ET streets and i dont know if i will upgrade from my current 2500 hughes convertor or not. i dont want to unless i have to..
This may be so, but like i said we have not had any luck with it. We got the intake on a 289 engine we purchased from a friend years ago. The engine was built for a pinto and was supposed to run 7.20s or better in that car per the local engine builder. 289, 6.20 solid cam, ?duration? ported iron heads balanced rotating assembly, high comp pistons,T289 intake. The guy who owned the car was a logger, and he never really had any time to run it he mostly listened to it run and spun really long burnouts on the highway infront of his house. Anyways me and my dad finally got him to take it to the track and it was always flat at take off then it would pick up and run 7.80 (1/8). He was not much into tuning, so he went home upset and it never went to the track again. We aquired the car years later ( late 90's) and put it in our Mav. Same thing. WE added a carb spacer tried 1" then up to 2" which was better, but never enough to remove the flat spot. We were using the converter that was for the pinto with i think 4.56 gears (not sure on this. been too long) but the engine would not stall higher than 1500 with room to flash on what was supposed to be a 4500 stall converter. We always figured it was the converter. Years pass and we later aquire a mustang II from the same guys son (to race) . very similar engine setup except with a 302 and 351 windsor heads Weiand intake. Mustang had some issues of it's own that were not figured out until after the head gave in to extreme porting failure. To make a long story even longer the car set at our place for a few more years until the owner let us have it soooo we put the eng in the almighty Mav dyno with stock 351 heads on it and the t289. use our converter which was 3500 fairbanks and it was flat off of the line. Still thinking it was a conver we purchased one specific for the engine 4500 stall. install it and instant dissappoitment. We sent it back and had it loosed up even more installed it and it was better, but not my much. We have alot of money spent now so we just run the combo as it is. We do get 7.50 out of it, but that was it. Out of the "it can't get any worse" mentality we in stalled the cobra intake that we had used for years on this engine with no changes and . Instant happiness. We have not been to the track with it, but we live at the end of a long straight strip of highway and having run the t289 setup on it and now this cobra setup is like night and day. T289 is flat until +3000 but it pulls thru the shift light @6000, Cobra idle and pulls thru shift light @6000. And the converter now works. Now i am not saying the t289 is not a great intake, but we have not as of yet been able to make it run on these two setups, or our 302 flat top piston 586 roller setup with 3500 converter, 289 iron heads, 351 iron heads or the Kasse heads(well we didn't really expect much from this setup on these heads but they just looked too pretty not to put on). We did get to 7.48 with the kasse heads and the cobra intake, but back to 7.8s with the t289. Well there is one bit of info that i have left out, all of these combos have been run thru 1.5~2ft of 3" pipe and 3" flowmaster race mufflers.
I have had a bunch of different intakes. Rpm, air gaps, Torker 289's, STealths, etc. The RPM is by far the best matched intake to most folks' mild 302's. The T289 was OK. Lazy below about 3000 and it hit a brick wall at 6200 give or take. Stealth was OK as well, same laziness below 3000 but pulled harder up top. Victor Jr was the best one for top end power, but forget about having any bottom end. 4000 RPM is where it starts to come on and it doesn't give up (at least not at 7200). Believe it or not, the difference between a Victor Jr and an RPM airgap on the strip was that the AirGap was about .2 quicker! That was on a mild 306 248-252 @ .050, .543 lift solid roller...12:1 compression. The ET came from a MUCH better 60' time and 330' time. It takes a serious engine to make use of a Jr on a 302--a lot more serious than anything we've built. Dad's 331 did pretty good with it, but it's alcohol injected with no fuel in the intake, so that is not an apples-to-apples comparison. It's now on the 347. We'll see how that works out. I swapped 3 different intakes on my old Mustang. Had a T289 on it when I got it. I really didn't like the way it had no bottom end so I swapped it for a Victor Jr that I had laying in the shed. Great top end, no low end. As long as the RPM was above 3500 it did pretty good, but for street driving, creative use of the clutch pedal was imperative (aluminum flywheel, light internals, etc). It's best power curve was from 4000 to about 7300 give or take a few hundred. Then I swapped on a new air gap (when they first came out) which made it a totally different animal. Low end power was MUCH MUCH improved, right off of idle so I could idle around pretty easily. Top end was decent but it started to sign off at about 6800...which was fine with me because I only had it above 4500 maybe twice a year at the most (at the strip). It was WAYY better on the street than the T289 or Jr. Later on I changed to a Hyd roller cam that was a little more mild and it really woke up the low and mid range of the engine, which was what I was after. The solid cam was just a little too much for a street car. Also, I have had people ask me the difference between a Performer and a Performer RPM. The regular performer is just a stock intake and the RPM will give the same low end but a better mid range & top end. I bought a Stealth for my old truck....wished I had spent the money on the RPM instead. Not only did the Stealth not fit, it did not work on that combo very well. I had to elongate the holes (no decking of the block or heads) for them to fit and even then the port mismatch was pretty bad; but it's what I had and used for a long time. Power was down in the low end but midrange was pretty good, top end was so-so, but that engine never ran over 6000 RPM. The intake also got very hot to the touch but I don't know if that was the intake's fault or what....but it did help in the summer time to let me lean out the mixture a little for decent mileage. But carb boiling was always a problem if I shut it off hot & start it back up a few minutes later (like at a gas station). Edelbrock carbs are notorious for that....seems that they may have gotten the problem solved with spacers, but I never used them on that engine...it barely fit under the hood anyway and even a 1/2" spacer wouldn't fit. I found the best use for the T289 intake was on a blow-through turbo. Worked GREAT on the old Maverick turbo.
First: Given this limited amount of information I'd have to say that this is Victor Jr. territory. Second: Any solid lifter cam in the .620" range will have too much duration for a 3500 or a 4500 converter with 289 cubic inches. You would need a 5500 converter. Not sure if you know this or not but torque converters "see" the torque of the engine....not the rated stall speed on the box. You can take that 3500 converter, put it behind a 289/302 and you might see 3200 rpm on a transbrake. Put the same converter behind a 351W and you'll see 3800 rpm on the transbrake. This brings up another point: Big difference between foot braking a converter and putting one on the transbrake. You won't see anywhere near as much stall speed out of a converter if you are foot braking the car. The brakes just won't hold the car. On a transbrake you could see 3200 rpm but with the foot brake you wouldn't see 2500 rpm. Don't put a lot of stock into what it says on the box. Call the manufacturer and tell them what you've got. BE SPECIFIC!!!! Engine size, camshaft figures (all of them!), cylinder head flow number if you've got them, intake/carb combo, header size, transmission gearing, rear end gears, tire size, car weight, etc. Personally, I feel you haven't used the Torker where it is supposed to be used. You have too tight of a converter for starters. Also, without knowing the camshaft figures I really can't offer much more help.
Still stuck on that single pattern camshaft, eh? Given this information you could use either the Stealth or the RPM Air Gap. With that camshaft.....you better upgrade. :evilsmile
Your absolutly correct. That is why we took it off of the engine. While your here how about some suggestions on intakes you have used with the proposed set up at the beginning of the thread. this t289 stuff is not really what this thread was about, but it became very interesting once it did come up.
