[Whitemaro6]

Ok so here goes. I noticed a lot of people doing dyno results and analyzing results from the MSD manifold but its hard to find any info on the piece itself so here goes. I have a bunch of photos in no particular order and I will attempt to describe whats going on. I went into this knowing I was going to port and polish the MSD regardless of what I found inside. This is not a review for horsepower results this is my personal impression of it's quality after getting my hands on the intake and messing with it.

Pros:
Overall initial impression the piece is nice. It looks good and the way it is put together is well thought out. The nuts and bolts are all stainless, the right size and appear to be good quality. Separating the two half's of the manifold is straight forward. Remove three center bolts and 12 perimeter bolts and the two half's come apart. Each top bolt has its own seal. The top half has the 4 tb bolts in it and not much else. The bottom half is where all the meat is. The runners are easy to get at and nothing is hidden. The runners are heat melted on and not removable. The rubber seal that sits between the two half's if the same material and quality as the OEM seals. Re-seating the two half's is easy but requires a little patience to get right. The included instructions are easy to read, straight forward and cover everything needed to do the install. The plastic the manifold is made of is super close to OEM feel and sand-ability. The ports and booster line hole all fit the OEM lines perfectly. If your into looks the piece looks really good in the bay with the black and red coil covers as well. The OEM Tb sits bolts up and seals nicely.

Cons:
To start the particular kit I revived was missing a perimeter bolt and washer (supposed to be 12 I got 11). One of the perimeter bolts still had molding plastic covering over the hole. The nut was still set and all I had to do was just punch thru the thin plastic over flow to open the hole to put in the bolt (see pic). Not a big deal just annoying. One of my concerns however with the plastic is it has some air bubbles from casting and not small ones either. I took a picture or the bubble that was on a structural piece (the inside of the tb seal 8th photo down). The bubbles seemed to be random and in places that would not affect performance with this particular cast. However this brings into question the integrity of the outer shell and critical joints. If I was running boost this would be a huge concern as hidden air pockets could be in the walls and a failure waiting to happen. Next is the plastic casting overflow. Its worse than I would accept for the units price. I had a fast 102 on my GTO and that I though was rough but the runners on the MSD need attention before installation in my opinion. Its not that its uniform or really protruding, its that its random and jagged. That being said most of it was thin and easy to remove with just the fingers and sanding. The pictures I took are kind of dark and I took after picking at them for a little bit with my hands. One of the top center bolts that holds the two pieces together spins in place after I tried to tighten it to spec. I can get close before it spins but luckily its not a critical bolt.

Overall:
The big question. Is it worth the $1100 ish? I unfortunately cannot render a verdict until I get it on a dyno after I finish cleaning it up. Right now i'm leaning towards no, but that might change once I see numbers. If your into looks it is definitely your piece. After dealing with the few manufacturing defects and missing bolt its ready to bolt up. Hopefully it performs for me after porting.

Let me know if I can explain whats going on in any of the pics.